Delhi. Gateway of Allahood Deen's Palace, Old Delhi

This 1863 albumen print by Samuel Bourne captures the monumental Gateway of Alauddin Khalji's palace complex in Old Delhi, made during the very first year of Bourne's remarkable seven-year photographic residency in India. Bourne arrived in Calcutta early in 1863 and quickly began documenting the subcontinent's architectural grandeur, and this image represents some of his earliest professional work in India — taken before he even embarked on his first major Himalayan expedition that July. The photograph belongs to a broader project of recording Mughal and Sultanate-era monuments at a time when British colonial interest in India's ancient heritage was intensifying.

Bourne worked with a large-format wet plate collodion process, producing negatives of exceptional clarity that were then printed as albumen prints — a technique that yields the warm, luminous tonal range visible here. Known for combining rigorous technical skill with a painterly compositional eye, Bourne brings the same sensibility to this urban architectural study that he would later apply to sweeping Himalayan landscapes. The gateway, with its Islamic arches and weathered stonework, speaks to Delhi's layered history under the Delhi Sultanate, and Bourne's photograph serves as both an artistic document and an invaluable historical record of a structure that has changed significantly over time.