Captain Linnaeus Tripe is a major,
yet now sadly little known, figure in the history of early photography. Whilst
in service with the Madras Army, on his first furlough of home leave in
England around 1851, he learnt the rudiments of the photographic process and
soon honed his skills in composing and taking pictures, as well as becoming a
founding member of the Photographic Society of London. Returning to India in
1854 he created his first major body of work, conducting a photographic survey
of the Hoysala temples at Halebid and Belur, which was very well received when he
subsequently exhibited in Madras in 1855, and resulted in his first major
commission from the British authorities in Calcutta.
Appointed as an offical photographer he accompanied a British diplomatic
mission to the neighbouring kingdom of Burma in August 1855, making a visual record of the
journey. Tripe produced more than 200 paper negatives of sites and scenes
within Burma. Recording temple buildings and other places, such as Amarapura –
then the capital of Burma, which were later completely abandoned and reclaimed
by nature. He worked primarily with paper negative techniques as these were
better suited to the tropical climate in which he had to work. Yet, due to the
colour sensitivities of the chemistry involved in this process, the vivid blue
of the skies overhead were often completely washed out, hence he and his
assistants had to learn how to retouch the photographic plates by hand. This
they managed to do very skilfully indeed.
A new exhibition which has very
recently opened (on June 24th) at the V&A Museum in London gives an unprecedented chance
to view Linnaeus Tripe’s photographs up close. The exhibition which has toured
to two previous venues in the USA, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, exhibits around 70 examples of
Tripe’s photographs – ranging from his early endeavours whilst on home leave in
England to the Burmese mission and other photographic survey work which he
conducted in India. I visited the exhibition soon after it opened and found myself
utterly absorbed. It is fascinating to examine and contemplate such early
processes in photography as well as the nature of the subject matter they set
out to document. Both scholarly and artistic in scope, range, style and
execution, Tripe’s photographic endeavours are truly remarkable; and all the
moreso when one considers that his photographic career spanned little more than
a period of five years.
As anyone who follows this blog
will know, I am deeply interested in colonial era photographs (see Picturing the Past in Colonial Asia). Hence it was a real joy to look at these very
early images up-close and in detail. The sheer artistry of the retouching and
the effect of the actual photographic techniques is one of the aspects which
make these images so interesting. On the one hand, some of them are vividly
precise in the level and intricacy of detail they managed to capture, whilst
others are rendered almost impressionistically, like etchings with a faded grainy,
yet bafflingly precise sort of realism. These really are images which the
visual historian can get truly lost within.
I couldn’t help reflecting on the
multiple epistemological approaches which one could read into, as well as take
from, these images. They clearly have an intrinsic
value as historical documents, both in the sense of the subjects they record,
preserving scenes from a vanished world, and as contemporary perceptions of
that particular time itself. But they also have the value of being examples of
the pioneering techniques of early photography 'out in the field'. Then there is
an extrinsic value, if you like,
which we as spectators place upon the images as historical documents and visual
artefacts. Both of which have interpretative
values which work on multiple levels too – depending on whether we choose to
focus on them as cultural or scientific; political or artistic; documentary or
technical experiments; or, a multi-layered and multi-purpose mix of all these
aims and intentions. Whichever way we choose to look at them they are unique
primary sources of an irrecoverable past, they provide a genuine window onto a
former time and a world long since transformed.
Looking at Tripe’s original
photographs (as opposed to reproductions in modern books or on the internet)
one can feel and appreciate their materiality in a way which is impossible via
any other means. For me this exhibition is a perfect example of primacy and the
importance which is intrinsically endowed in consulting original historic
documents firsthand. There is simply nothing like seeing the real thing. This
is an exhibition I highly recommend, and certainly it is one which I’d urge
anyone interested in visual history or early photographic technology, as well
as South Asian temple architecture, not to miss.
Colossal Statue of Gautama, Amarapura, Burma, 1855
The
Victoria & Albert Museum, London: 24 June – 11 October 2015
Jambukeshvara Temple, Srirangam, India, 1858
For more information on the life
and work of Captain Linnaeus Tripe read John Falconer’s excellent article on
the British Library’s Asian & African Studies Blog
Images in text - Top: Trumul Naik's Choultry, Madurai, India, 1858; Middle: Major-General Linnaeus Tripe, c.1880s; Bottom: Zhwe Zigong Pagoda, Bagan, Burma, 1855 (All images, The British Library, London ).
Jambukeshvara Temple, Srirangam, 1858.
Jambukeshvara Temple, Srirangam, 1858.
Jambukeshvara Temple, Srirangam, 1858.
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