1866
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The Upper Himmalayahs. View on the New Road between India and China. Mt. Pangi with the Snowy Peaks of China in the Distance is a 1866 by Samuel Bourne, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a steep mountain road winding through snow-capped peaks, with tiny figures and pack animals climbing toward a distant pass. This photo was taken in the 1860s, when Samuel Bourne lugged a heavy camera and glass plates up the Himalayas. He made some of the first clear images of the region before roads or tourists arrived. The shadows and textures show how sunlight actually looked on rock and ice. For more early mountain photography, look up the subject of england.
The 50 images in this album, all taken in the 1860s, move from the hill towns of the Himalayas down to cities including Lahore (now in Pakistan), Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Benares (now Varansi), and Calcutta (now Kolkata). Architectural studies of major monuments offer valuable historical records of what sites such as the Taj Mahal and the imperial mosque of the Mughal emperors in Delhi looked like before 20th-century restorations.
Samuel Bourne, the author of most the images in this album, was a banker in England before he moved to India to become a professional photographer.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Samuel Bourne was a British photographer known for his prolific seven years' work in India, from 1863 to 1870.
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