Kanchenjunga, Eastern Himalayas - 1946
By Randolph Bezzant Holmes (1888-1973)

Oil on paper, 41.5 x 51.5 cm

British photographer Randolph Bezzant Holmes (1888-1973) learned the art of photography from his father William Dacia Holmes who opened the Holmes Studio in Peshawar in 1889. Randolph Holmes took over the business from his father and operated the studio as Randolph Bezzant Holmes Co. until 1947. He lived in the North-West Frontier Province of British India for over fifty years and travelled extensively throughout the region photographing much of northern India and Central Asia. Many of the detailed landscapes and topographical photographs in this exhibit were taken by Holmes when he accompanied the British colonial army during the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919.

Holmes was also a painter and an author. He published Between the Indus and the Ganges Rivers in 1956 and left a draft of Khyber Frontiers in Turmoil among his papers. The manuscript describes the social/political upheavals that rocked the North-West Frontier Province when India and Pakistan became independent in 1947. Holmes tried to convey the natural beauty of the region and of the people by hand tinting and/or over-painting his photographic prints.

Collection: British Library