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Some of the finest views of India taken during the 1850s-60s were the work of Dr John Murray (1809-98), an officer in the Bengal Medical Service who is acknowledged as one of the great masters of the calotype process. Between the 1850s and early 1860s he made a large series of large-format paper negatives of architectural subjects in Northern India, producing a particularly important and detailed documentation of the Taj Mahal. He is seen here seated with a portable viewer for stereoscopic photographs.