Taj Mahal
John Murray British, Scottish
Not on view
With unique authority, the camera offered nineteenth-century European viewers and armchair travellers a glimpse of the exotic, far-flung corners of the British Empire. Dr. John Murray, employed in the medical service of the Army of the East India Company, took up photography in the early 1850s.
At a time when photographic emulsions were not equally sensitive to all colors of the spectrum, most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure of both landscape and sky in a single picture. For instance, if the negative was properly exposed for buildings, the sky would often appear faded and blotchy. Murray solved this problem by blacking out the sky on his waxed paper negative so that, when printed, the heavens above the Taj Mahal would appear limpid and radiant.
