Ali Musjid and Camp from Sultan Tarra
1870
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1870
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Ali Musjid and Camp from Sultan Tarra is a 1870 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet hillside with a few white tents and a small fort perched on the slope. This photo was taken during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, but it doesn’t show fighting. Early cameras couldn’t freeze fast action, so photographers like Burke documented the places where battles happened instead. The stillness makes the scene feel strange—like a pause before something big. If you want to see more photos from this conflict, 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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