[Cecil Beaton]
'If I am able to convey, by the photographs in the following pages, a little of the beauty and strength of India, my journey will not have been in vain.'
India is arguably one of the finest photo books Beaton published during his lifetime. A two-page introduction is succeeded by one hundred large, full-page, black-and-white photographic plates. The book was published in 1945 in Bombay, a year after Beaton’s return from his Far East assignment for the Ministry of Information. At home, he worked through the thousands of images he had taken whilst in India and chose a selection to be reproduced, representing the different facets of the country that he had experienced. Temples, schools, villages, hospitals, children, soldiers, street vendors, ancient sites, the Viceroy’s palace, Maharanis, factories, sailors and farmers make up an eclectic mix. Scarce with the dust jacket and bound with a front endpaper which is usually lacking.
Cecil Beaton. Thacker & Co. Bombay. 1945. First edition. Hardback, quarto; green cloth-bound boards with gilt title within debossed panel to front board, dust jacket. [106 pages]. 100 black and white full-page photographic plates. English. 280 x 240mm. 1.2kg. . Very good, in near fine dust jacket; slight shelf wear to jacket, slight ruffling to head of spine, short 2cm tear to top edge of front cover; slight spotting to fore-edge, previous owner's inscription to front free endpaper, the name obscured by the remnant of white correcting fluid, with the stamp of a New Dehli bookseller.
