- Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852–1860
- September 21, 2014 – January 4, 2015
- West Building Ground Floor
This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.
Captain Linnaeus Tripe (1822–1902) occupies a special place in the history of 19th-century photography for the outstanding body of work he produced in India and Burma (now the republic of Myanmar) in the 1850s. Although he learned photography in Great Britain from amateurs who considered it a pastime, he recognized that it could be an effective tool for conveying information about unknown cultures and regions. With few models to follow, Tripe developed a professional practice under the auspices of the large bureaucracy of the British East India Company. Reflecting his military discipline as an officer in the British army, he achieved remarkably consistent results, despite the Indian heat and humidity, which posed constant challenges to photographic chemistry. In addition, Tripe’s schooling as a surveyor, where the choice of viewpoint and careful attention to visual details were essential, gave his photographs their distinctive aesthetic rigor.
This exhibition traces Tripe’s work from his earliest photographs made in England (1852–1854), to ones created on expeditions to the south Indian kingdom of Mysore (1854), to Burma (1855), and again to south India (1857–1858). Many of his photographs were the first to document celebrated archaeological sites and monuments, ancient and contemporary religious and secular buildings — some now destroyed — as well as geological formations and landscape vistas; thus they provided a new kind of visual information. Yet the dynamic vision Tripe brought to these large, technically complex photographs and the lavish attention he paid to their execution indicate that his aims were artistic as well.
Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Sponsors: This exhibition is made possible by The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art.
It is also supported by the Trellis Fund.
Additional funding is kindly provided by Edward Lenkin and Roselin Atzwanger.
Other Venues: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 24–May 25, 2015
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, June 23–October 11, 2015
Image: Linnaeus Tripe, Madura: The Vygay River with Causeway, across to Madura, January–February 1858, albumen print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Carolyn Brody Fund and Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through Robert and Joyce Menschel
Exhibition Catalog
Captain Linnaeus Tripe
Roger Taylor, Crispin Branfoot, with Sarah Greenough and Malcolm Daniel
Related Content
Public Symposia Program (PDF 621KB)
Press
Audio and Video
- Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852–1860, Part 2: Interpreting Early Photography in India: Medium and Method
- Audio, Released: January 5, 2015, (28:08 minutes)
- Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852–1860, Part 1: “A Glorious Galaxy of Monuments”: Photography and the Archaeological Survey of India after Tripe
- Audio, Released: December 29, 2014, (42:43 minutes)
- Introduction to the Exhibition: Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852-1860
- Audio, Released: October 7, 2014, (57:02 minutes)
- Captain Linnaeus Tripe: Photographer of India and Burma, 1852–1860, Part 3: Measuring Time: Linnaeus Tripe’s Inscription of the Thanjavur Temple, 1858
- Audio, Released: January 14, 2014, (40:48 minutes)