Taj Mahal and Gardens 1853 - 1857

This is a photograph of the Taj Mahal and its gardens, made by John Murray, a British doctor and photographer active in India during the mid-19th century. Murray’s image offers us a window into the colonial gaze on Indian monuments. The Taj Mahal, built by a Mughal emperor, was already a potent symbol of Indian history, but through the lens of a British photographer, it becomes an object of documentation and, perhaps, a symbol of the power dynamics of the British Raj. The negative itself is a physical object with its own history. You can research the photographic techniques of the time, the economics of photography in colonial India, and the ways in which the British administration used photography for documentation and control. The image isn't just a picture; it's a historical document embedded in layers of social, cultural, and institutional history.