I’ve been known to grumble about the weight of my camera bag. When I’m packing for a long trip the bag is
likely to weigh in at 12 or 13 kg once I’ve added in a laptop and tripod. However, a talk I went to recently made me
think that maybe that’s not really too bad.
The talk, at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, was by Hugh
Rayner of Pagoda Tree Press and covered the early years of photography in
India, from 1860 to the end of the 19th century. The talk included the work of numerous
photographers across India including amateurs from the well-heeled English and
Indian communities and some of the early professionals.
The character from the talk that grabbed my imagination was
the British-born photographer, Samuel Bourne.
After a few years of amateur photography in the UK in the late 1850s and
early 1860s, he decided it was time to quit his job in banking and head out to
India to work as a professional photographer.
Bourne spent six years in India, working in partnership with variety of
other photographers; one of the partnerships he established, Bourne and
Shepherd, went on to become the society photographers in India in the 20th
century, and is still operating today.
During his time in India, Bourne undertook three major
expeditions, and these were the adventures that really grabbed my imagination. The first two trips were from Simla up into
the Sutlej Valley and into Kashmir, the third trip lasted six months and went
high into the Himalayas, up to about 18,000 feet probably establishing an early
altitude record for photography.
My photographic kit collection, entirely digital and fitting
into one backpack, is very modest compared to the one used by Bourne. He was
also working using 10 x 8 inch glass plates, and on a six month trip took a several
hundred images. The fragile plates
which couldn't be ‘backed-up’ other than by making contact prints, were very
susceptible to damage either by scratching or, at the disastrous end of the
spectrum by dropping.
On these trips, Bourne used the 'wet collodion' process which
requires that the photographic plates are made up, exposed and then processed
in a very short period of time.
So on this trip Bourne not only needed a camera and lenses (lots
of wood and brass) and tripod, he also had lots of heavy glass plates and a mobile
dark-room. To move this lot around he had
a team of about 40 porters travelling with him – there are clearly some
advantages with modern photography.
On the other hand, Bourne never found himself half-way up a
remote valley with his batteries running out...
No comments:
Post a Comment