Landmarks & Legacies - Incredible India & Nepal

The Society’s Collections comprise over 11,500 items specifically relating to the historical geography of India & Nepal, dating from the 17th century to the present day.
 
Highlights include over 18,000 photographs taken during the nine British Mount Everest expeditions between 1921 and 1953. Which saw Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary become the first two people to stand on the summit of the world’s highest mountain. A wonderful series of photographic images documenting Eric Newby’s journey along the Ganges many of which were published in his ‘Slowly Down the Ganges’, one of his many masterpieces. And a number amazing items such as a leather specimen collecting bag used by Sir Joseph Hooker on his journeys in the region.

In the footsteps: Samuel Borne | In the footsteps: John Baptiste Lucius Noel | In the footsteps: Raj Man Singh Chitrakar

In the footsteps of: Samuel Bourne

Regarded as one of the finest commercial photographers of the 19th century, Samuel Bourne spent six years photographing the landscape and architecture of India and the western Himalayas. Whilst working as a bank clerk in Nottingham in 1855, Bourne decided to take up a new hobby – photography, purchasing his first camera at a cost of £5. In 1858 he took a photographic tour of the Lake District and exhibited his photographs in Nottingham and London, receiving recognition at the London International Exhibition in 1862. Following this success, Bourne gave up banking and set sail for India to work as a professional photographer in Shimla, later establishing the photographic firm Bourne & Shepherd. From Shimla, he embarked on three successive photographic expeditions to the Himalayas, journeys which he described in detail in articles in The British Journal of Photography.

Bourne’s third expedition was his most ambitious, travelling into the Himalayas with the aim of reaching and photographing the source of the Ganges. Accompanied by G.R. Playfair, a geologist and botanist, Bourne and eighty porters travelled to an altitude of 18,600 feet, setting a record for the highest altitude photography, and reaching the Gangotri Glacier, one of the primary sources of the Ganges. By the time he left India in 1870, Bourne had produced over 2,500 photographs.

In the footsteps of: John Baptiste Lucius Noel

Before the First World War, John Noel served as a soldier with the East Yorkshire Regiment, stationed in Calcutta. In 1913, he travelled to Tibet in disguise and without permission and although he did not achieve his aim of reaching Mount Everest, Noel journeyed to within 40 miles of the mountain. In 1919, he presented a paper to the Royal Geographical Society about his travels in Tibet and suggested that Mount Everest could and should be climbed. Retiring from the Army in 1920, Noel was appointed as official photographer and filmmaker on the 1922 and 1924 Mount Everest Expeditions. Noel’s films and photography of the two expeditions and the loss of Mallory & Irvine on their summit attempt in 1924, led to great public interest in Mount Everest.

Noel lectured widely following the expeditions and partnered with lantern colourist, Frederick Raetz, who is credited with colouring the lantern slides for his Everest lectures. With funding from Harvard University, Noel set off on an expedition to India in 1929, accompanied by Raetz, and travelled to Mount Siniolchu, the Kashmir Valley and the Taj Mahal. The coloured lantern slides created from Noel’s photographs were used to illustrate his lectures to audiences across the United Kingdom and North America.

In the footsteps of: Raj Man Singh Chitrakar

Raj Man Singh Chitrakar is recognised as a pioneer in Nepalese realist artist. Between 1820 and the mid 1850s, he was commissioned by the pioneering naturalist and ethnologist and the British Resident of Kathmandu at the time, Brian Houghton Hodgson, to create illustrations of the architecture and natural history of the Kathmandu Valley.

Guided by Hodgson, Chitrakar learned new watercolour and drawing techniques and the use of the camera obscura to apply Western concepts of lighting and perspective, capturing the subject matter in a realistic, lifelike style. His illustrations contributed to many of Hodgson’s research papers and were used as reference material by James Fergusson in his 1876 book ‘History of Indian and Eastern architecture’.

Chitrakar’s work was so accurate that his sketches and watercolours have been used in recent restoration projects in Nepal following the devastating earthquake in 2015.