Birds Eye View of Jellalabad, from the Springs
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Birds Eye View of Jellalabad, from the Springs is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You’re looking down on a dusty valley: a walled city, tents, and a river winding through brown hills. Soldiers and pack animals move along the roads like tiny ants. This isn’t a painting—it’s one of the first photographs ever taken in Afghanistan during war. The camera couldn’t freeze fast action, so Burke framed quiet moments that told the story anyway. His lens turned battlefields into landscapes anyone could study. If you want 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.
