For a number of modern commentators, Linnaeus Tripe's Indian photographs conjure up the timeless Orient: for one the images evoke ‘the romantic dream of the exotic East’,1 for another they record ‘the bizarre qualities of both the architecture and the landscape, with a sense for light and composition that transcends the simple picturesqueness of European photographs’, for a third they capture ‘the sweep and vastness of the Indian subcontinent’.