Kolkata

Vintage: Calcutta by Clyde Waddell (1945)

Vintage: Calcutta by Clyde Waddell (1945)

Mr. Waddell was a military photographer. Many of his captions seems like annotations that would be found in a typical military magazine. The album begins with several general long shots of Calcutta and ends with a picture of dhobi-s (washermen) washing clothes. The text accompanying the last photograph also sounds as if the author intended to finish with that picture…
Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Calcutta, India (1890s)

Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Calcutta, India (1890s)

Throughout the late 18th and 19th century, the city was a centre of the East India Company’s opium trade. By the 1850s, Calcutta had two areas: White Town, which was primarily British and centred on Chowringhee and Dalhousie Square; and Black Town, mainly Indian and centred on North Calcutta. The city underwent rapid industrial growth starting in the early 1850s,…
Kolkata Calcutta: Some Kind of Beauty by Fionn Reilly

Kolkata Calcutta: Some Kind of Beauty by Fionn Reilly

Kolkata Calcutta is a superb collection of classic black-and-white, and colour photographs of one the world’s most enthralling and mysterious cities as revealed through the lens of photographer Fionn Reilly. Inspired by the films of Kolkata’s celebrated director Satyajit Ray and the great Indian photographer Raghubir Singh, Reilly’s images capture an intense city that exudes a true sense of soul,…