Linnaeus Tripe at Hans P. Kraus Jr.

This article was originally published on March 29, 2013

It is for such venues as Hans P. Kraus Jr. that this blog exists.  Located a few blocks from the Metropolitan, it's as far from the latter's bustling tourist crowds as one can get; and yet, to anyone with an interest in the early history of photography, the exhibits shown here are as exciting as any on view at the larger venue.  In a world inundated daily by floods of images, it's easy to lose sight of photography's beginnings.  A gallery such as Kraus performs an invaluable service by preserving the early masterpieces of photography and by putting them on view to the general public. In addition, the staff are knowledgeable and willingly share their expertise with an unknown visitor.

As for the works on display, Linnaeus Tripe's 1855 appointment as "artist in photography" to the British diplomatic mission to Burma effectively makes him, together with Francis Frith, one of the earliest professional travel photographers on record, a true forerunner of today's National Geographic photojournalists.  Considering the primitive technology he had at hand, the difficulties Tripe faced in completing his mission must have been enormous.  If the rainy weather of the English countryside had hindered Talbot a few years earlier, how much more so must have Southeast Asia's monsoon season worked against Tripe.  He later claimed that during his stay he had only been able to work a total of 36 days.

The photos shown at the exhibit are salt prints made from waxed calotype negatives.  Salt prints represent the earliest form of photography; the process was invented by Talbot who used it in printing his own work a decade before Tripe returned with it to India.  In the examples displayed from the Burma portfolios, Tripe shows himself to have mastered the medium in an extremely short period of time.  (He had only begun studying photography while on leave in England from 1850 through 1854, and his earliest surviving photo dates to 1853.)  Tripe also displayed excellent compositional skills.  There is one fascinating print at the Kraus exhibit that shows two individuals in the lower foreground slightly blurred by the length of the exposure.  One wonders if they were there by chance or if Tripe had instead deliberately placed them within the frame.