Lot 296
PHOTOGRAPH ALBUMS
Auction: 19 November 2003 at 12:30 GMT
Description
3 albums of photographs. The majority of the photographs depict service life and scenes in India 1917 - 18. Others depict the progress of the photographer (Reginald G. Broad) from schooldays at Marlborough to Cambridge. With 2 further albums, mostly of postcards, but with a number of photographs.
Note: After the army, Broad went up to Cambridge and after graduation joined his family firm of solicitors. On inheriting money from his uncle, he retired, dying at the age of 92 in 1996.
The Indian photographs depict the military and social life at a fascinating period of the British in India - Polo, Tiffin, Poonah, Club Life and Native servants, evocative of the kind of existence caught by such writers as E.M. Forster.
Forster too would have shared Broad's apparent interest in handsome young soldiery. His photographs of the recumbent, sleeping (?), half-naked Private Billings somewhat startlingly interrupt the otherwise rather conventional records of Broad's surroundings. There is a certain latent ambiguity, even, complicity, as we cannot be quite sure if the subject is truly aware of the photographer's presence or not. Billings' sultry sprawling in the torrid heat of the day seems to give more than just a hint of the photographer's private passion - only the postludial cigarette seems lacking.