General View of Dakka
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
General View of Dakka is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet riverbank lined with tents and British soldiers in red coats. The city of Dakka sits across the water under a hazy sky. This isn’t a painting—it’s one of the first photographs taken in Afghanistan during war. The camera was too slow for battle scenes, so Burke focused on the still moments: camps, bridges, and the faces of men who fought there. His images helped people back home see a war they’d only read about. To see more early war photography, 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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