A comment on Bakirathi Mani's essay “Archives of Empire: Seher Shah’s Geometric Landscapes and the Spectacle of Force” in Unseeing Empire (Duke University Press, 2020), written for Alternative South Asia Photography Connect.
Image: Stereograph of “the golden canopy in the Durbar tent of H.H. the Maharaja of Cashmere, Delhi, India”. (Created by Underwood & Underwood. [c. 1903]. From Library of Congress Prints and Drawings Online Catalog. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004667552/)