John Claude White (1853-1918) was the earliest photographer of many Himalayan regions, and exhibition at the Rubin Museum in New York City until January 11, 2011 is the first to examine the works of this British civil servant. Raj photography aficionadas know that he was one of the most extraordinary photographers to have worked in the subcontinent.

For those who cannot make the exhibition, and his life and works have been expertly researched by Kurt Meyer and Pamela Deuel in their book In the Shadow of the Himalayas: Tibet - Bhutan - Nepal - Sikkim A Photographic Record by John Claude White 1883-1908 .

From the Curatorial Description

A British Life in a Mountain Kingdom: Early Photographs of Sikkim and Bhutan is the first exhibition of photographs by John Claude White, presented in original prints and large-scale reproductions from two important albums on view. White, a British government officer and civil engineer, spent much of his career stationed in places that one hundred years ago were, and to an extent still remain, shrouded in a certain veil of mystery: India, Nepal, Sikkim, Tibet and Bhutan.

Though he was born in Calcutta, White spent his teenage years studying in Bonn, Germany in the 1880s, where he was undoubtedly intrigued by the recent "golden age" of mountaineering of the mid-19th century that saw the first ascents of many Alpine peaks. White was given the chance to live amongst some of the world's most formidable mountains himself in 1888 when he was assigned to the Sikkim-Tibet Boundary Commission, tasked with mapping and surveying the regions' borders. Unlike his counterparts who owned large homes in India and traveled occasionally to their posts in the outlying Himalayas, White settled with his family in Sikkim, where they remained for over two decades.