Ali Musjid and Camp
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Ali Musjid and Camp is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet valley with a stone fort on a hill and rows of white tents below. Soldiers and pack animals dot the landscape. This photo was taken during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Burke traveled with the British army, but he couldn’t shoot battles—cameras were too slow. Instead, he documented the places where fighting happened, like this fort. For more photos of war zones from the same time, look up *John Burke (Irish, 1845–1915)*.
The subject of this album is the Second Anglo-Afghan War, which was fought from 1878 to 1880. John Burke was the first photographer to photograph extensively in Afghanistan and the main photographer covering that conflict. The technology of the day did not permit action shots of battles. As is usual for early conflict photography, the pictures are landscapes of the sites of momentous incidents, views of camps and civil and military infrastructure, and portraits of the soldiers and their leaders.
This album includes some of the earliest photographs of Afghanistan.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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