Wife of Maharaja Teen Chandra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana of Nepal

This portrait of an unidentified woman was taken by the same studio that produced the coronation album of 1903 on exhibit here. This studio was located near the Princely Capital of Indore, in western India. Both Herzog and Higgins had earlier worked for the Indore studio set up by Lala Deen Dayal. This formal studio portrait is of a common type in which the subject was placed against a backdrop, often in a stiff pose. This practice was popular at a time when people could not yet take their own snapshots. The woman shown is done up in some finery. The costume is hard to place, but the subject does appear to be Indian. She wears a turban-like hat that somewhat resembles those worn by members of the Parsi, or Zoroastrian, community in western India at the time. Elements of the costumes and props in this photo remain unexplained.