From Kashmir to Kabul: The Photographs of Burke and Baker, 1860-1900

From Kashmir to Kabul is the first book to piece together the remarkable careers of Baker and Burke. No photographers of the Raj era witnessed more wars, discoveries, news events and human diversity than did these two Irishmen. Few encountered the kinds of adverse conditions, hauling heavy equipment and glass plates over steep mountain ranges, and mixing chemicals at dangerously high altitudes than Baker and Bourke. Based on decades of research, this book chronicles their early days in Peshawar and their move to Muree, the Himalayan hill station on the border of Kashmir. It follows their documenting of the Afghan Wars, some of the earliest war photography, and their return to the plains of Lahore, where they continued to photograph the region’s people and landscape. Baker and Burke’s story is also the story of photography itself, a medium that was evolving at a dizzying pace—as quickly as the world they sought to capture was changing.