Landi Kotal Pass, Looking Towards Dakka
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Landi Kotal Pass, Looking Towards Dakka is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a steep mountain pass with jagged rocks, a winding dirt road, and a few soldiers on horseback in the distance. This isn’t a painting—it’s an early war photograph. Burke lugged heavy glass plates and a portable darkroom into Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. He couldn’t snap fast-moving battles, so he framed quiet moments like this: the land itself, waiting. For more of these rare 1870s 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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