Philip Henry Egerton

Once again Hugh Ashley Rayner has done a great service to Raj photography by reprinting this important 1864 photographic volume by a British administrator. Philip Henry Egerton was traveling to an even more obscure area in the Himalayas at the same time as Samuel Bourne. While his photographs are not as impressive, the narrative and stories are richer.

He may celebrate the photography less than Bourne - one entry simply reads "July 23rd. Photography" - but his descriptions of the patience involved in taking those first photographs with immature chemicals at enormous heights are gripping: "Certainly photography in these remote regions is carried on under difficulties. For my collodion (Thomas') shrivels up and peels off the plate when drying though carefully sheltered from the sun and wind; and I am constantly losing some of my best pictures that way" (p. 62).

Egerton also played a different role behind the camera than Bourne - he was a powerful administrator (like the later John Claude White) making critical decisions affecting the lives of his subjects along the photographic path: "After photographing these groups we retired to my tent to discuss the commutation of grain rates or tithes . . .. (p. 54).

This from a man who also wrote "I suppose an Englishman is less able to fraternize with a strange people, and to adopt their habits for a time, than the native of almost any other country" (p. 86). Incredibly, Egerton will run into Europeans from priests to Bohemian counts who are already making their way into these valleys. Not to mention the English-speaking Indian fakir from Bombay who had fled desk life as a copyist to wander without a blanket in the mountains .

Another fine, carefully done production by Pagoda Tress Press.