Art Institute of Chicago

No. 23. Pugahm Myo [Pagan]. Figures in Damayangyee Pagoda [Dhamma-yan-gyi].

Linnaeus Tripe

Date

1855, printed 1856

Medium

Salted paper print, from the album "Burma Views" (1857)

Culture

England

Department

Photography and Media

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Linnaeus Tripe produced some of the earliest photographs ever made of British India and Burma. 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’s army and began to experiment with photography in the early 1850s, photographing temples and other Indian monuments. In 1855, James Broun-Ramsay, the British governor general of India, commissioned him to join a diplomatic mission to Burma as its official photographer to document architecture and points of interest. 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.” In this photograph of the famous Buddhist Dhammayangyi temple, four disciples of Guatama Buddha are seated with lotus flowers as their footstools.

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