Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T15:46:03.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The Myriad-Pencil of the Photographer’: Seeing, Mapping and Situating Burma in 1855*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2010

ANDREW JARVIS
ANDREW JARVIS*
Affiliation:
Magdalene College, University of Cambridge Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the 1850s photography was a nascent technology. Linnaeus Tripe's photographs and the Burmese Konbaung polity were perceived to be new and/or novel. They were defined and interpreted in relation to things that were established and better-known, as Tripe sought to understand photography and culturally locate ‘Burma’. Tripe was not simply a ‘colonial’ functionary, but an exploratory photographer attempting to classify the subjects of visual representation—mainly Buddhist architecture—and explore photography itself. He strove to be systematic and methodical in his ‘mapping’ of locales: he photogenically captured specimens of architecture, which could then be compared with specimens from elsewhere and located in a ‘Linnaean system’. The lack of clearly defined expectations gave him room for experimentation in his delineations of unphotographed locales, which meant that he could ultimately decide for himself what was worthy of being represented. It takes a concerted effort today to see his photographs as they might have been seen in the 1850s. They can be interpreted in myriad ways and a limitless number of meanings can be ascribed to them, reflecting the ambiguous nature of the medium. Interpretations are shaped by archival contexts and microhistories of circulation and presentation; when viewing the prints today it is important not to posthumously infer Tripe's intentions and motivations without adequately considering the circumstances in which he operated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , July 2011 , pp. 791 - 823
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The photographs are referred to in the text according to Tripe's original numbering scheme (i.e. No. 95). It is important to note that Tripe simply referred to these photographs as ‘Views’. Burma Views is the name given to the portfolios by Janet Dewan in her catalogue raisonné. See The Photographs of Linnaeus Tripe: A Catalogue Raisonné (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 2003), p. 211.

2 Tripe's note accompanying the portfolios (i.e. IOR: Photo 61/2), reproduced in Dewan, Photographs, p. 211.

3 Grant, Colesworthy, Notes Explanatory of a Series of Views Taken in Burmah by C. Grant During Major Phayre's Mission to the Court of Ava (Calcutta: s.n., 1855), p. 27Google Scholar.

4 See Mark Harrison's article, ‘Science and the British Empire’, Isis, 96 (2005).

5 Kumar, Deepak, Science and the Raj: A Study of British India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

6 Prakash, Gyan, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 19Google Scholar.

7 MacKenzie, John, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

8 Ballantyne, Tony, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism and the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 13–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Dirks, Nicholas, ‘Colonial Amnesia and the Old Regime in the Photographs of Linnaeus Tripe’, in Pelizzari, Maria Antonella (ed.), Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and the Politics of Representation, 1870–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 198Google Scholar.

10 For an exemplary volume of essays critiquing such an approach, see Lieberman, Victor (ed.), Beyond Binary Histories: Re-imaging Eurasia to c. 1830 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Berger, John, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), Chapter 1Google Scholar.

12 Sunil Khilnani, ‘The Colonising Camera’, The Hindu, 12 May 2002.

13 Pinney, Christopher, The Coming of Photography in India (London: British Library, 2008), p. 3Google Scholar.

14 For example, see King, Catherine and Perry, Gill with Durbridge, Nicola, Introduction, in King, Catherine (ed.), Views of Difference: Different Views of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 8Google Scholar.

15 MacKenzie, Orientalism, p. xiv; see also Waterson, Roxana (ed.), The Architecture of South-East Asia Through Travellers’ Eyes (Kuala Lumpur and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. xixGoogle Scholar.

16 Yule, Henry, A Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855, together with the journal of Arthur Phayre, Envoy to the court of Ava, and additional illustrations by Colesworthy Grant and Linnaeus Tripe, with an introduction by Hugh Tinker (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1968; first published, 1858), p. 165Google Scholar.

17 © The British Library Board, Photo 61/1(19).

18 See James Fergusson, ‘Note on the Affinities of the Indian and Burmese Styles of Architecture’, Appendix L in Yule, Narrative, pp. 377–380.

19 Willem van Schendel, ‘Guns and Gas in Southeast Asia: Transnational Flows in the Burma-Bangladesh Borderland’, Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia (August 2006), p. 3.

20 Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 31Google Scholar.

21 Tripe to Murray, 22 July 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725 (‘IOR’ refers throughout to the India Office Records in the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections at the British Library, London).

22 Aung-Thwin, Maitrii, ‘Introduction: Communities of Interpretation and the Construction of Modern Myanmar’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 39, 2 (June 2008), p. 188CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 For an overview of the war's tangled origins, see Pollak, Oliver B., ‘The Origins of the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–53)’, Modern Asian Studies, 12, 3 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Symes, Michael, An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava, sent by the Governor-General of India in the Year 1795 (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1800), p. 456Google Scholar.

25 Symes, An Account of an Embassy, p. 461.

26 Myint-U, Thant, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Hugh Tinker, Introduction, in Yule, Narrative, p. vii.

28 Yule, Narrative, p. 1.

29 Thant Myint-U, Making of Modern Burma, p. 127.

30 Yule, Narrative, p. vi.

31 Phayre, Arthur P., History of Burma, Including Burma Proper, Pegu, Taungu, Tenasserim, and Arakan: From the Earliest Time to the End of the First War with British India (London: Susil Gupta, 1883)Google Scholar.

32 Yule, Narrative, pp. 192, 194.

33 Thant Myint-U, Making of Modern Burma, p. 127.

34 Henry Yule, ‘On the Plan of Burmese Monasteries’. Appendix F in Yule, Narrative, pp. 384–385.

35 Yule, Narrative, p. 193.

36 Thant Myint-U, Making of Modern Burma, p. 127.

37 Minute by Dalhousie, 13 December 1855, IOR/P/SEC/IND/196.

38 Yule, Narrative, p. 193.

39 Yule, Narrative, p. 35.

40 See Henry Yule's sketch, ‘The Palace at Amarapoora, With the White Elephant’ (Plate 16), in Yule, Narrative, facing p. 84.

41 See Colesworthy Grant's sketch, ‘The Hairy Woman’ (Plate 17), in Yule, Narrative, facing p. 94.

42 Vincent, Frank Jr, ‘Two Months in Burmah’, Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, 8 (1876), p. 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the same author's The Land of the White Elephant: Sights and Scenes in South-Eastern Asia; A Personal Narrative of Travel and Adventure in Farther India, Embracing the Countries of Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Cochin-China (1871–72) (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1873).

43 Yule, Narrative, pp. 93–94.

44 For example, see Houghton, W., ‘On a Hairy Family in Burmah’, Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, 7 (1869), pp. 53–59Google Scholar; Garson, J. G., ‘Notes on Photographs Illustrating Cases of Hypertrichosis’, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 13 (1884), 6–7Google Scholar.

45 McDonald, Sarah, ‘Linnaeus Tripe’, in Hannavy, John (ed.), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 1409Google Scholar.

46 Dewan, Photographs, p. 3.

47 Dewan, Photographs, p. 4.

48 Dewan, Photographs, p. 4.

49 McDonald, ‘Linnaeus Tripe’, in Hannavy (ed.), Encyclopedia, p. 1409.

50 Madras Exhibition of Raw Materials, Arts, and Manufactures of Southern India 1855 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 725.

51 Minute by Dalhousie, 3 July 1855 (7 February), IOR: E/4/829.

52 Calder, Julian and Garrett, John, The 35 mm Photographer's Handbook (London: Pan Books, 1999), p. 174Google Scholar.

53 Tripe to Pycroft, 1 September 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

54 Taylor, Roger, Impressed By Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), p. 129Google Scholar.

55 For an overview of the difficulties faced by travelling photographers ‘under an Indian sky’, see Taylor, Impressed By Light, Chapter 9.

56 Tripe's note accompanying the portfolios, reproduced in Dewan, Photographs, p. 211.

57 ‘Private Journal of Arthur Phayre, 1 September to 22 October 1855’, in Yule, Narrative, p. xxxiii.

58 Dehejia, Vidya. ‘Fixing the Shadow’, in Dehejia, Vidya (ed.), India Through the Lens: Photography, 1840–1911 (Munich: Prestel, 2001), p. 17Google Scholar.

59 Falconer, John, ‘Photography in Nineteenth-Century India’, in Bayly, C. A. (ed.), The Raj: India and the British, 1600–1947 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1990), p. 269Google Scholar.

60 Sutnik, Maia-Mari, Introduction, in Dewan, Janet and Sutnik, Maia-Mari, Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of British India, 1854–1870 (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1986), p. 3Google Scholar.

61 Tripe's note accompanying the portfolios, reproduced in Dewan, Photographs, p. 211.

62 Yule, Narrative, p. 89.

63 Tripe and Yule actually selected 122 from 219 negatives: two were panoramics, which comprised two negatives each. See Dewan, Photographs, p. 24.

64 Tripe to Pycroft, 1 September 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

65 For instance, Pugahm Myo/Pagán. See Dewan, Photographs, p. 210.

66 Dehejia, India Through the Lens, p. 14.

67 Pinney, Coming of Photography, p. 11.

68 Falconer, India, p. 9.

69 Joseph Mullins, ‘On the Applications of Photography in India’, Journal of the Photographic Society of Bengal (21 January 1857), pp. 35, 35.

70 Mitchell, Jesse, ‘Description of a Plain or Waxed Paper Process in Photography’, Madras Journal of Literature and Science, 1 (October–December 1856), pp. 71–80Google Scholar.

71 India and Bengal Despatch, No. 22 of 1855 (7 February), IOR: E/4/829.

72 Desmond, Ray, Victorian India in Focus: A Selection of Early Photographs from the Collection in the India Office Library and Records (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 3Google Scholar.

73 Index to India Secret Consultations, 27 July 1855, No. 18, IOR: Z/P/2012.

74 Yule, Narrative, p. 25.

75 Beadon to Grant, Fort William, 13 June 1855, IOR/L/P&S/5/224.

76 Beadon to Grant, Fort William, 13 June 1855, IOR/L/P&S/5/224.

77 Grant, Notes, p. 29.

78 Pinney, Christopher, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (London: Reaktion, 1998), p. 18Google Scholar.

79 Grant, Notes, p. 28.

80 © The British Library Board, Photo 61/1(95).

81 Madras Exhibition of Raw Materials, Arts, and Manufactures of Southern India 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

82 Madras Exhibition 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

83 G. H. R. Tillotson, ‘The Indian Picturesque: Images of India in British Landscape Painting, 1780–1880’, in Bayly (ed.), Raj, p. 142.

84 Sutnik, Introduction, in Dewan and Sutnik, Linnaeus Tripe, pp. 1–3.

85 See Arnold, David, The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Keck, Stanley L., ‘Picturesque Burma: British Travel Writing, 1890–1914’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 35, 3 (October 2004), 387–414Google Scholar; Stepan, Nancy Leys, Picturing Tropical Nature (London: Reaktion, 2001)Google Scholar.

86 William Henry Fox Talbot's treatise on his calotype process was called Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to delineate themselves without the aid of the artist's pencil (1840). See ‘Books and Manuals About Photography: 1840s’, in Hannavy (ed.), Encyclopedia, p. 177.

87 Yule, Narrative, p. 89.

88 Madras Exhibition 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

89 Sutnik, Introduction, in Dewan and Sutnik, Linnaeus Tripe, p. 4.

90 Taylor, Impressed By Light, p. 129.

91 See Henry Yule's lithograph, ‘The Burmese Drama’, in Yule, Narrative, facing p. 16.

92 Dewan, Photographs, p. 9.

93 Madras Exhibition 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

94 Falconer, India, p. 16.

95 Public Despatches to Bengal, No. 1 of 1847, 27 January 1847, IOR: L/P&J/3/1021.

96 Madras Exhibition 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

97 India and Bengal Despatch, No. 22 of 1855 (7 February), IOR: E/4/829.

98 Tripe to Murray, 22 July 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

99 Dewan, Photographs, p. 6.

100 Dewan, Photographs, p. 6.

101 At this time kala broadly meant ‘overseas person’ and was used to describe foreigners coming from the west, including the peoples of Europe and India. See Thant Myint-U, Making of Modern Burma, pp. 89–90.

102 See Laurie, William F. B., The Second Burmese War: A Narrative of the Operations at Rangoon, in 1852 (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2002; first published, 1853), Chapter 7Google Scholar.

103 Dewan, Photographs, p. 295.

104 McCosh had previously taken photographs during the war of 1845–1846 in the Punjab. See Desmond, Victorian India in Focus, p. 64; Taylor, Impressed By Light, pp. 121–124.

105 The overlapping vocabularies of photography and war/hunting have been discussed by scholars in various fields. For instance, see Paul S. Landau, ‘Colonial Vision’ (2004), http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/africaforum/Landau.html [accessed 14 May 2010]; Ryan, James R., Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Sontag, Susan, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1973)Google Scholar.

106 Laurie, Second Burmese War, p. 108.

107 Laurie, Second Burmese War, p. 70.

108 © The British Library Board, Photo 61/1(107).

109 Drayton, Richard, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

110 Dewan, Photographs, p. 3.

111 Stafleu, Frans A., Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The Spreading of Their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789 (Utrecht, Oosthoek, 1971)Google Scholar.

112 Cited in Pratt, Imperial Eyes, p. 25.

113 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, pp. 27, 31.

114 The holotypes are Dolium magnificum from China and Murex multispinosa from Cebu in the Philippines. See Dewan, Photographs, p. 21.

115 This is an unattributed, but ostensibly direct, quote in Grant, Notes, pp. 48–49.

116 Berger, Ways of Seeing, p. 10.

117 Fort St George Public Consultations, 15 April 1859, IOR: P/249/69.

118 Tripe to Murray, 22 July 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

119 Tripe also stressed the importance of ‘the instruction of Subordinates’, who would aid him in his work.

120 MacKenzie, Orientalism, p. xiv.

121 Tripe to Murray, 22 July 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

122 © The British Library Board, Photo 61/1(63).

123 Tripe to Murray, 22 July 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

124 Yule, Narrative, p. 89.

125 It took a contemporaneous photographer using the same waxed-paper calotype process an average of nine minutes to get a good negative. See Jesse Mitchell, ‘Description of a Plain or Waxed Paper Process in Photography’, in Dewan, Photographs, p. 85.

126 These two figures, who appear in several other photographs (i.e. No. 118), may be Tripe's Indian assistants, but this cannot be verified.

127 Dewan, Photographs, p. 263.

128 Grant notes simply that the white elephant was ‘taken out for the purpose of being photographed by Captain Tripe’, but no other evidence of this event has survived. See Grant, Notes, p. 28.

129 © The British Library Board, Photo 61/1(73).

130 Maria Antonella Pelizzari, ‘From Stone to Paper: Photographs of Architecture and the Traces of History’, in Pelizzari (ed.), Traces of India, p. 33.

131 Tripe to Murray, 22 July 1856, Boards Collection 7 to Madras Public Letter No 35 of 1856, IOR: F/4/2725.

132 Tripe's note accompanying the portfolios, reproduced in Dewan, Photographs, p. 211.

133 Dehejia, India Through the Lens, p. 11.

134 These can be found in the Print Room at shelfmarks Photo 61/62/63.

135 As noted above, Sunil Khilnani critiques this approach to early photographs of India. See Sunil Khilnani, ‘The Colonising Camera’, The Hindu, 12 May 2002.

136 Tripe's note accompanying the portfolios, reproduced in Dewan, Photographs, p. 211.

137 Edwards, Elizabeth, ‘Some Thoughts on Photographs as History’, in Harris, Clare and Shakya, Tsering (eds), Seeing Lhasa: British Depictions of the Tibetan Capital, 1936–1947 (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003), p. 129Google Scholar.

138 Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Some Thoughts’, p. 132.

139 David Arnold, The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze, p. 36.

140 Yule, Narrative, p. 3.

141 Yule, Narrative, p. 138.

142 Fergusson, ‘Note on the Affinities of the Indian and Burmese Styles of Architecture’, Appendix L in Yule, Narrative, pp. 377–380.

143 See Scriver, Peter, ‘The Architectural Historiography of Colonial India and Its Colonial Modern Contexts’, in Scriver, Peter and Prakash, Vikramaditya (eds), Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

144 Fergusson, James, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London: John Murray, 1891; first published, 1876), p. vGoogle Scholar.

145 Fergusson, History, p. 611.

146 Madras Exhibition 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

147 Thant Myint-U, Making of Modern Burma, p. 253.

148 Fabian, Johannes, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 143, 148, 152Google Scholar.

149 Fabian, Time and the Other, p. 148.

150 The Ananda is now believed to have been built later, during the reign of Kyanzitha, who ascended the throne of Pagan in 1084. See Swearer, Donald K., Buddhism and Society in Southeast Asia (Chambersburg: Anima Books, 1981)Google Scholar.

151 See Stoler, Ann Laura, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

152 Edwards, ‘Some Thoughts’, p. 129.

153 Falconer, India, p. 19.

154 Text by Boswell, in Tripe, Linnaeus, Photographic Views of Ryakotta and Other Places in the Salem District (Madras: s.n., 1858), plate 5Google Scholar. Cited in Falconer, India, p. 19.

155 Lieberman, Victor, ‘Reinterpreting Burmese History’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29, 1 (January 1987), 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156 For an informative illustrated introduction to Burmese kyoungs, see Fraser-Lu, Sylvia, Splendour in Wood: The Buddhist Monasteries of Burma (Trumbull: Weatherhill, 2001)Google Scholar.

157 Grant, Notes, p. 27.

158 Yule, Narrative, p. 162.

159 Grant, Notes, p. 29.

160 Madras Exhibition 1857 (jury report), reprinted in Dewan, Photographs, p. 726.

161 Sontag, On Photography, p. 10.

162 Sontag, On Photography, p. 10.

163 Yule, Narrative, p. 152.

164 © The British Library Board, Photo 61/1(53).