Architecture as Enemy: Felice Beato’s Photographs of Lucknow
Journal: Oxford Art Journal
Year: 2021

In spring 1858, the intrepid Italo-British photographer, Felice Beato (1832–1909), arrived in Lucknow, a city recently occupied by the British following the 1857 Indian Rebellion.1 He climbed to the parapets of the Kaisarbagh, a sprawling palace complex from which the photographer surveyed and captured the once-thriving courtly capital of the north-Indian state of Awadh. The city was hollowed out and decimated by fighting, its palaces, shrines, and villas exposed to Beato’s conquering gaze. Befo