Indian Diary and Album

The Ministry of Information's decision to send society photographer Cecil Beaton to the Far East to record the Allied war effort during World War II might have raised a few eyebrows, but as this collection of his photographs demonstrates, it was an inspired choice. Reproduced here with selections from his travel diary "Far East", the photographs depict the war zones of Arakan and Assam on the Burmese frontier, and life under the Raj, which remained largely untouched by the conflict. The combination is a portrait of an India where the architectural splendour of empires long past alternated with lonely landscapes, and the opulence of the upper classes contrasted with the poverty and deprivation of the masses.