Magic Lantern

Through A Magic Lantern: Jackson's INDIA 1895

Home Screen, Demo CD

William Henry Jackson went to India with the World Transportation Commission (WTC). The WTC was set up by one of the organizers of the 1894 World's Fair in Chicago, Major Pangborn. It's purpose was to document the railway systems that were transforming the globe at the end of the 19th century. The Indian railway system was the largest single capital investment of the colonial era. In the 1890's it was at the cutting edge of railway engineering.

D uring his visit, Jackson took a large set of Photochroms and colored magic lantern slides of South Asia. He used still secret photographic processes that pre-date the invention of real color photography by decades. These photographs are among the only such colorized series that have survived into our times. The art and techniques of colorization Jackson pioneered in India would, between 1900 and 1920, help lead to the mass popularization of color postcards in America. Jackson would then become known as the "Father of the American Picture Postcard."

J ackson's twenty-three illustrated articles for Harper's Weekly were the first extended description for the American public of the Indian subcontinent. Until Jackson's photographs were published or shown in magic lantern shows, India was best known in America from print engravings of thuggees, elephants and tigers, Maharajahs, nautch girls and tribesmen.
Harper's Weekly had published many of these images. Jackson's photographs were new and authentic by comparison. He had a unique opportunity to take pictures and write about what they showed, even if, as it turned out, editors often got in the way.
Jackson also kept daily diaries and wrote regular letters to his wife Mollie in Denver. They detail his quarrels with Major Pangborn, his responses to the cropping of his images in New York, his hopes for keeping a famous photographic studio alive in Denver through a deep recession. They give his candid opinions of the British colonialists, and provide a dramatic personal thread to his long journey.
Users of the CD-ROM will follow in Jackson's footsteps. Using QuickTime VR, they will be able to wander through train cabins, meeting workers, storytellers, musicians and many other characters. Interactive plateaus will permit exploration of Madras, Bombay, Lahore, Delhi, Benares, Calcutta and the island of Sri Lanka [Ceylon].

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