Kuta Kushta
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Kuta Kushta is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a quiet Afghan valley: stone walls, dusty roads, and a few British soldiers standing near a camp. This isn’t a painting—it’s an early photograph. Burke lugged heavy glass plates across battlefields to document the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The tech couldn’t freeze gunfire, so he framed still moments: empty forts, tired troops, the land itself. It’s one of the first times a war was shown this way. Look up the technique impasto to see how later painters built thick, textured surfaces—Burke’s photos, by contrast, are flat but just as layered.
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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