A few years back Omar Abdullah posted this photo of Sheikh Abdullah on Twitter. He said this was 'another one of my grandfather from 1947 or thereabouts' - but nothing about the location or the photographer.
It is a marvellously evocative image, apparently showing Kashmir's new ruler as the old order - the princely family, and its portraits - is being dismantled and moved out. It seems to be taken at one of the royal palaces.
Abeer, who was then working at the Amar Mahal Library in Jammu, got in touch to say that the portrait of the woman to the right of the chair if Maharani Tara Devi, the wife of the last maharajah and Karan Singh's mother, and that propped up in the corner is either a portrait or photograph of Raja Amar Singh, the father of Kashmir's last maharajah, Hari Singh. He believed the location to be Gulab Bhavan / Grand Palace, which is now a hotel.
But that still left the question of when this photograph was taken and who the photographer was - it's clearly much more than a snapshot. Now - with huge thanks to Jehangir Bakshi - we can answer those questions. Jehangir found this remarkable image below among a large number of photos taken in Kashmir for the news magazine Life which have been posted online.
It is a marvellously evocative image, apparently showing Kashmir's new ruler as the old order - the princely family, and its portraits - is being dismantled and moved out. It seems to be taken at one of the royal palaces.
Abeer, who was then working at the Amar Mahal Library in Jammu, got in touch to say that the portrait of the woman to the right of the chair if Maharani Tara Devi, the wife of the last maharajah and Karan Singh's mother, and that propped up in the corner is either a portrait or photograph of Raja Amar Singh, the father of Kashmir's last maharajah, Hari Singh. He believed the location to be Gulab Bhavan / Grand Palace, which is now a hotel.
But that still left the question of when this photograph was taken and who the photographer was - it's clearly much more than a snapshot. Now - with huge thanks to Jehangir Bakshi - we can answer those questions. Jehangir found this remarkable image below among a large number of photos taken in Kashmir for the news magazine Life which have been posted online.
And here's a close-up which demonstrates that this was taken as part of the same photo shoot as the image at the top of the page - who the other person in the photo is I haven't been able to work out. (If you have any ideas, do let me know!)
Curiously, the close-up of Sheikh Abdullah is not among the large batch of Life photos posted online - but there can't be any doubt that this was the work of the same photographer at the same moment. And the details of who took the wider shot are available - taken in Kashmir in November 1951 by Howard Sochurek.
Howard Sochurek in 1955 Sochurek worked for Life from 1950 for about twenty years and is particularly noted for his photo-journalism during the wars in Korea, Indochina and Vietnam.
It is particularly satisfying to be able to 'solve' this minor mystery. There are plenty more - above all, what happened to Margaret Bourke-White's photographs taken in Srinagar at the close of 1947. But one step at a time! (A.W.)
It is particularly satisfying to be able to 'solve' this minor mystery. There are plenty more - above all, what happened to Margaret Bourke-White's photographs taken in Srinagar at the close of 1947. But one step at a time! (A.W.)
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