Great Pagoda, Great Bull, Front View, Tanjore, India (Rajarajeshvara Temple), plate 12 from Photographic Views of Tanjore and Trivady (Madras: Madras Presidency)

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In a pillared pavilion called a mandapa, a colossal stone sculpture of Nandi, the mount of the Hindu god Shiva, faces the doorway to the main temple sanctum. The inner wall and section of the great gateway leading into the sacred site can be seen in the background of Tripe’s photograph. As an active Indian temple, the plinth, or base, of the pavilion is painted with alternating red and white stripes. Tripe, however, opted not to include any living presence in the image, since humans and animals might move and create a blur, spoiling his clear photographic record of the monument. Active in Burma and India during the late 1850s, Linneaus Tripe was a professional soldier and official photographer for the Madras Presidency in India from 1856 to 1860.