Art Institute of Chicago

No. 8. Ye-nan-gyoung [Yenangyaung]. Kyoung.

Linnaeus Tripe

Date

1855

Medium

Salted paper print, from the album "Views of Burma" (1856)

Culture

England

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Linnaeus Tripe produced some of the earliest photographs of British India and Burma ever made. The British ruled large parts of India through the East India Company, a corporation with its own private armies and governmental functions. Tripe rose through the ranks of the Company army, and began to experiment with photography in the early 1850s, photographing temples and other Indian monuments. In 1855, James Broun-Ramsay, Governor General of India, commissioned him to join a diplomatic mission to Burma as its official photographer to document architecture and points of interest. Over the course of several months, Tripe produced over 200 waxed paper negatives, selecting 120 for albums for the colonial government of India; this print is from an album that remained, until recently, with the Broun-Ramsay family. When the complete series was exhibited in 1857, the jury called the photographs “excellent; remarkable for great distinctness and also for their unusual and beautiful tint.”

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