Bala Hissar
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Bala Hissar is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet hillside fortress under a pale sky, walls made of sun-bleached stone and a few soldiers standing near the gate. Burke didn’t paint this—he took it with a heavy camera on a tripod. The photo shows the Bala Hissar fort during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, but no battle is happening. Instead, it’s a still moment, like a breath held between gunfire. The technology of the time couldn’t freeze fast action, so Burke framed the places where history unfolded. To see more of these early war photos, 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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