

AUCTION OF THE DAY
AUCTION OF THE DAY
Clyde Waddell (1916 - 1997) - A YANK'S MEMORIES OF CALCUTTA
Lot Closed
ASN0028-34 Auction Type: Online
Album of Sixty-Photographs (Silver Gelatin Prints on Paper)
Published in 1946
Dimension: Album Cover - 10.25 x 13.5 in / Prints – 8 x 10.2 in each
R 1,25,000 - R 1,75,000
Winning Bid: ₹ 80,000 + Premium/Taxes
Details
Details
Introduction by M. Charles Preston, New York City, 'ex-enlisted man, former CBI'er and co-worker with the author on Phoenix Magazine in Calcutta, India.
Cover: Black rexine-covered boards; binding held together with nut and bolts, as issued.
One page of printed title-page cum introduction followed by 60 original silver gelatin prints on paper set into slits in thick sheets, one to a page. Facetious captions to each photograph, printed below in typewriter typeface.
The back of the title page has dedication, acknowledgements and copyright notice, also printed. The inside of the back page binding cover has logo inscribed with ‘Made By The Universal Bookbindery Inc., San Antonio, Texas'.
Title & Sequence of Photographs in the album:
1. Chowringhee Street
2. Hooghly river and part of Calcutta’s east bank
3. Aerial view of Calcutta downtown
4. Hindustan building
5. Mass of billboards at the corner of Harrison Street (Burra Bazar) and Strand Road, Calcutta
6. Chowringhee Square with Jama Masjid on left
7. Karnani Estates, apartment hotel for U.S Army officers
8. The American Red Cross Burra Club
9. View of Calcutta’s snarling traffic
10. Buffalo movement on Old Court House Street with view of Great Eastern Hotel
11. Sikh taxi driver with attendant and two American G.I.s
12. People climbing the tram
13. Monkey’s dancing the ‘American Jitterbug’ dance
14. Snake charmer with mongoose
15. American G.I’s looking at the snake-wallah’s hooded cobra
16. Crowd gathering around a sidewalk performer, with G.I’s in a truck
17. Professor Sher Mohammed after biting the head of a live Krait snake
18. Madman in front of Howrah Motor Co. Ltd
19. The Jain Temple, Parashvnath Mandir
20. Kalighat Temple
21. Hindu wife praying to God Shiva for blessing of fertility
22. Brahmins worship in the Kalighat temple
23. Hindus bathe in the holy water of a canal
24. Nimtolla burning ghat
25. The Nimtolla Mosque
26. Indian women returning from prayer at Jain Temple
27. Indian movie actresses Binota Bose & Rekha Mullick
28. Young woman feeding infant from giant coconut
29. Marble palace with coolies in the foreground
30. Calcutta’s poor buying kerosense
31. Indifference of the passersby on a downtown Calcutta street
32. Tram workers on strike (Calcutta Tramway Workers Union)
33. The Hooghly Bridge, Calcutta – the third largest cantilever bridge in the world
34. Street scene outside the Calcutta Stock Exchange
35. Bathing ghats along the Hooghly river
36. GI dock workers
37. Sacred cattle and coolies with Howrah Railroad Station in the background
38. Travellers on the railway platform
39. Travellers with India’s wandering holy men on the railway platform
40. Calcutta counterpart of the American railroad magazine stand
41. The largest market in the East, the New Market
42. American G.I’s purchasing trinkets for the girl friend
43. American G.I purchasing Brassware and Gurka knives in New Market
44. View outside New American Kitchen, a popular Chinese restaurant, owned by a Portugese
45. View of the street with Firpo’s famous restaurant in the background
46. Sikh boys selling precious stones to G.I’s outside Hamilton & Co. ltd
47. View of a shop
48. Corner bookstalls specializing in lurid novels that captivate British & American soldiers alike
49. Nightfall in Calcutta
50. Shoemakers sewing and smoking, along with Dhobis
51. Homeless sleeping on the pavement huddled together
52. A little snooping in the opium den at Chinatown
53. A G.I at a brothel
54. Early morning view of Park Street with the milkman
55. Noon snack on the street
56. ‘Patty-cake Annie’
57. Paan wallah
58. Sidewalk tonsorial parlor
59. Coconut market on Cornwallis Street
60. Dhobis washing clothes
Literature
Literature
"Calcutta, the greatest city of Romantic India. "Jewel of the East" and enigma of the world, has been graphically captured in this fascinating volume of photographs."
Clyde Waddell (1916 – 1997) was a Houston (Texas, USA) Press Photographer who was sent to the India-Burma Theatre in November 1943 and acted as personal Press Photographer for Supreme Commander Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. The photographs in this album were taken by Waddell in 1945 in his spare time, “primarily at the behest of many friends who had been constantly asking him for photos of Calcutta scenes,” as the introduction clarifies. Soon he was flooded with requests and thus decided to issue this album in a small number of sets. The photographs include such out-of-bound areas for the American GIs as a brothel and a Chinese opium den. A number of them show the GIs in the context of Calcutta social life of those days. Others show Indian cremation ground, Jain temple, city scenes, some aerial views of Calcutta, Hindu priests, crowded railway platform, betel nut seller, washer men, people lined up in a kerosene ration queue or trying to clamber into a bus through windows!