In contrast to India, where evidence of photographic activity is apparent from soon after its European announcement in 1839, the medium appears to have been slow to penetrate the reclusive Burmese Empire. The earliest surviving images appear to coincide with increasing European embroilment with the country, in the form of a small series of photographs taken by John McCosh during the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852-4), a conflict that placed Lower Burma under British control. Similarly associated with British interests is the more substantial series of 120 large-format views (mainly of architectural subjects) taken by Linnaeus Tripė during the diplomatic mission sent to the Burmese court at Ava in 1855. While an apparently abortive attempt to establish an amateur photographic society in Moulmein was made in the same year, the lack of any substantial European market in Upper Burma severely restricted the growth of commercial photography in subsequent decades. Early studios such as that of Jackson & Bentley were trading in Rangoon by 1865, and Philip Adolphe Klier, perhaps the longest surviving and among the most prolific photographers of the country, had opened a studio in Moulmein by 1871. A significant proportion of early photographic activity before the 1880s, however, was characterized by the practice of Indian commercial photographers such as Bourne & Shepherd, who made photographic tours of the country without committing themselves to permanent studios. In fact, the development of photography continued to be closely associated with British colonial expansion: the absorption of the whole of Burma into Britain's Indian Empire after the campaign of 1885-6 led to an influx of European administrators, military personnel, and private traders which in turn stimulated a hitherto sluggish photograph market. The demands of tourism were also becoming a measurable factor by the 1890s, and this decade saw a significant increase in the numbers of commercial studios. Perhaps the most distinguished of these was that of the veteran war photographer Felice Beato, who had arrived in Mandalay c. 1887 and was to spend the final years of his career in the new dependency, trading as both a photographer and a manufacturer of tourist goods and furniture. The rising demand for photographs from both residents and visitors is clearly evidenced by the large quantities of surviving work from firms like Klier (whose business survived until the First World War), while the Ceylon firm of Skeen & Co. clearly felt by the late 1880s that the opening up of the country justified the establishment of a Burmese branch, which operated from 1887 as the partnership of Watts and Skeen. While several Indian photographers (most notably D. A. Ahuja) also established themselves in Burma towards the end of the 19th century, the work of indigenous Burmese photographers remains relatively scarce in this period.
The intimate connection between photography and the introduction of colonial rule to Burma is further emphasized in the work of some significant amateur photographers: Willoughby Wallace Hooper's most celebrated work, later published, records the progress of the 1885-6 military campaign which saw the overthrow of the Burmese monarchy, while another military officer, Arthur George Edward Newland, recorded the subsequent pacification operations in photographs that were published in The Image of War (1894). The colonial administrator Sir James George Scott (‘Scott of the Shan Hills’) also produced an impressive photographic documentation of tribal life during his career as Resident in the Northern and Southern Shan States between 1890 and 1910.
— John Falconer
