Jellalabad, Pipers Hill
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Jellalabad, Pipers Hill is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet hillside dotted with soldiers’ tents and a few men standing near a flagpole. This isn’t a painting—it’s an early photograph from the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The photographer, John Burke, lugged heavy glass plates across battlefields to document the landscape, not the fighting. The technology couldn’t freeze fast action, so he focused on camps and empty ridges instead. If you want to see more of these rare war images, 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.
Your cart is empty
Explore artworks →
