The English are savages, and the first impression I had in Bombay has now been confirmed here. I was thought to be a spy or a criminal – I provoked nothing but suspicion. Anyone else who comes here is allowed to visit the Khyber Pass, but I wasn’t allowed anywhere near. I was kept some 15 kilometres [10 miles] away. I asked the authorities why this was, having presented them with my papers, emphasising the fact that I wanted to go to Afghanistan to see certain villages. All my requests were immediately declined. I had taken two railway trips in 24 hours with all my equipment, only to be sent back empty-handed.

Vendors selling horses or renting cars refused to sell or rent to me, so that I could leave this English town, and the Governor let me know that if I tried, I would be expelled and escorted back to the military base. This is charming…. These people haven’t even gone to the trouble of properly reading the letters that I have given them; they remain as frosty and stiff as their starched collars. They are imbeciles, ridiculous and uncultured. I apologise for the tone of my letter, but this expresses only a fraction of my thoughts.

An excerpt from a letter to Jean Brunhes from Stéphane Passet, dated 19 January 1914.

In spite of this reception, Passet managed to take a series of remarkable photographs of India including the autochrome below which may be to be the earliest color photograph of the Taj Mahal.

Agra, India | 25-27 December 1913

Constructed between 1632 and 1648, the Taj Mahal was Shah Jahan’s mausoleum for his beloved wife Mumtaz, who had died in childbirth in 1631. Over the years it fell into disrepair, but in 1908 builders completed the restoration project ordered by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon. Stéphane Passet’s autochrome is among the earliest-known color photographs of India’s most famous monument.

Text and image taken from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.