Willoughby Wallace Hooper Photograph of Grasscutters in India

This collection consists of one item: Albumen print by Col. Willoughby Wallace Hooper, depicting a family of grass cutters in Indian, circa 1870s.

Hooper was an English army officer who spent over 40 years in India. Early in his career, he became known for being an avid and accomplished amateur photographer. As a result, in 1862 Hooper was transferred to the 4th Cavalry where he worked almost exclusively on acquiring portraits of the people of Central India. These portraits were undertaken as part of the India Office's efforts to assemble a vast database of visual information and descriptive texts on the complex society of colonial India. This database would eventually be published as a monumental eight-volume catalog entitled "The People of India: a Series of Photographic Illustrations, with Descriptive Letterpress, of the Races and Tribes of Hindustan." Hooper was also known for his photographs of the Madras Famine of 1876-1878 and the Third Burmese War.

FSA A1998.04

Hooper, Willoughby Wallace, 1837-1912

India

East Indians

Box 1

Purchase, 1998.

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Prints

Prints

Photographs

Albumen prints

Willoughby Wallace Hooper Photograph of Grasscutters in India, FSA.A1998.04. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Oversized file folder in one flat box.

Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.

Photographs

Albumen prints

Collection is open for research.