Kashmir, India, 1864
Samuel Bourne

Colonel Alexander Gardner was a wanderer, adventurer, traveler and mercenary. Believed to have been born in the United States to a Scottish father and a Spanish mother, he spent most of his life in Asia; frst with the Russian army, then living and fghting in Afghanistan with the rebel Habibullah Khan and fnally settling in India as Commander of the Artillery under the Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Tis image, taken by the renowned English photographer Samuel Bourne, shows The Colonel at the age of 79 in Srinagar (where he lived until his death) dressed in a tartan suit and matching turban.