One of the first photographers to document the outlying
regions of the British Empire, Samuel Bourne made three celebrated trips to the
Himalayas and Kashmir between 1863 and 1866. He photographed under exacting
conditions, traveling to high-altitude areas that made the laborious
glass-negative process all the more difficult. Bourne colorfully described his
challenges in the British
Journal of Photography, writing of snowstorms, extreme heat,
precipitous descents, and even a pony tumbling onto his tent in the mountains
as he developed a photographic plate. Despite these perils, Bourne left India
in 1870 with more than 2,000 negatives.