Samuel Bourne - The Pioneer Of Indian Photography

The technical skills and artistic vision, combined with the vigorous commercial energy, combined to produce the work of comparable stature. Such qualities characterize the work of Samuel Bourne, whose well documented career in India laid the foundation for commercial photography. Samuel Bourne was a British photographer born into an old farming family, at Arbour farm, Mucklestone, Stropshire, England in 1824. After being educated by a clergyman near Fairburn, he secured a job with Moore and Robinson's Bank, Nottingham as a clerk in 1855. His amateur photographic activities started about this time and quickly became an accomplished landscape photographer. He was lecturing on photography and contributing technical articles on photography to several photographic journals. In 1858, he displayed his photographs at the Nottingham, Photographic Society's annual Exhibition. In 1862, his photographs were exhibited at the London International Exhibition.

In 1963, Bourne abandoned his banking position, and set sail for India, to work as a professional photographer. On his arrival at Calcutta, Bourne was pleasantly surprised to see the flourishing state of photography. He initially set up in partnership with an already established Calcutta photographer, William Howard. They moved to Simla, where they established the "Howard & Bourne" studio. In July 1963, he left Simla on the first of his three major expeditions; he traveled across the Simla Hills to Chini, in the valley of the river Sutlej, 160 miles north east of Simla. He spent sometime taking pictures in the Chinni-Sutlej area and returned to Simla on 12th October with 147 fine negatives. Most of Bourne's photographs were planned theoretically at least, according to a rigid conception of the correct components. In the same year Bourne set out on another major trip, this time a nine month trip to Kashmir. Leaving Lahore on 17th March, he journeyed north-east to kangra and from there, via Byjnath, Holta, Dharmsala and Dalhousie to Chamba. Form there, he went on to Kashmir, arriving on the boarders on 8th June and by the middle of the month had reached the Chenab Valley.

In 1964 another professional photographer Charles Shepherd joined them to form "Howard, Bourn & Shepherd studio. However, Howard left for England in 1866, and it became Bourne & Shepherd studio. It became the premier photographic studio in India, and is still trading in Calcutta today, perhaps the world's oldest photographic business. Charles Shepherd evidently remained in Simla to carry out the commercial and portrait studio work, and to supervise the printing and marketing of Bourne's landscape and architectural studies, whilst Bourne was away traveling the subcontinent. He had made approximately 2,200 fine images of the landscape and architectures of India and the Himalayas working primarily with the 10x12 inch plate camera, and using the complicated and laborious wet plate collodion process. The impressive body of work he produced was always of superb technical quality and often of artistic brilliance. His ability to create superb photographs whilst traveling in the remotest area of the Himalayas and working under the most exacting physical conditions, places him firmly amongst the very finest of nineteenth century travel photographer.

Samuel Bourne's third and the last major expedition was perhaps his most ambitious; consisting of a six month journey in the Himalayas with the goal of reaching and photographing the source of the Ganges. He left on 3rd July 1866, and traveled through Kulu and Lahaul, over the Kunzum pass into the Spiti valley and crossed the Manirung Pass, where he took spectacular views of the 18,600 foot high pass; which remained for the next twenty years, the highest altitude photographs that had yet been taken.