Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Perumal Temple Vimana from Corner of Court, Madurai
Captain Linnaeus Tripe (British, 1822–1902)
1858
- Medium
- albumen print from a waxed paper negative
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image: 34.2 x 26.8 cm (13 7/16 x 10 9/16 in.); Paper: 34.2 x 26.8 cm (13 7/16 x 10 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- England, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Photography
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Although the temple would have been crowded with worshippers, Tripe shows us empty spaces. His paper negatives and primitive lens required long exposures, even in the bright sunlight of India—too long to record an individual in motion. Tripe, photographing for the colonial government, may also have used his official status to have the temple cleared of visitors so he could obtain unobstructed views of the architecture.
