Landi Kotal, The Camp, Looking South
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1879
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Landi Kotal, The Camp, Looking South is a 1879 by John Burke, a Impressionism work, depicting Ireland, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a black-and-white photo of a British army camp in a mountain pass, tents pitched in neat rows, soldiers standing around, and distant peaks under a hazy sky. This isn’t a battle scene—it’s what war looked like when cameras were too slow to catch action. John Burke, an Irish photographer, followed troops during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, documenting the quiet moments between fights. His photos were some of the first to show Afghanistan to the world. If you want to see more of his work, 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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