Willoughby Wallace Hooper facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Willoughby Wallace Hooper
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| Born | 4 February 1837  Kennington |
| Died | 21 April 1912 (aged 75) Kilmington |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Military photographer |
| Known for | ethnographic photographs of native people in colonial India and Burma |
| Works | The People of India (1868–1875), Burmah: a series of one hundred photographs 1887 |
Willoughby Wallace Hooper (1837 in Kennington, south London – 21 April 1912 in Kilmington near Axminster, England) was an English military officer and photographer, serving for near to forty years in the colonial army in southern India and British-Burma during the second half of the 19th century.
He is known for his photographs of ethnic groups, military and domestic scenes from the 1860s onwards. Among other photographers, he contributed to the ethnographic survey The People of India (8 vols, 1868–75). His photographs of victims of the Madras famine of 1876-8 and of Burmese prisoners facing execution by a firing squad have raised concerns about the ethical behaviour of photographers during his lifetime, as well as later on.
Life and work
After finishing school in Ramsgate, Hooper took up a position in 1853 as secretary at East India House. In 1858, he was commissioned into the 7th Madras Light Cavalry and subsequently seconded from his military duties in order to produce ethnographic photographs in the Central Provinces of British India and later, in British Burma. A self-trained and enthusiastic photographer, Hooper contributed over 450 photographic plates of native Indian people to the eight volumes of the ethnographic publication The People of India, published from 1868 until 1875. In a letter to the Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces of British India of November 1862, he reported about the circumstances of taking photographs of a remote hill tribe: "The photographs which I took of them, I had the greatest difficulty in procuring, as having never seen a European before, they were naturally very much alarmed, more specially as it was very difficult to make them understand what I was doing with them."
Around 1872, he published a series of staged photographs titled "Tiger Shooting", which he sold to hunters as proof and souvenirs, and edited again in 1887 as Lantern readings: Tiger shooting in India.
In 1885, he participated as Provost Marshal in the Third Anglo-Burmese War, which led to the end of the last Burmese monarchy under King Thibaw and to the establishment of British rule all over the country. Hoopers photographs of the fighting during this war are considered as “one of the most accomplished and comprehensive records of a nineteenth-century military campaign”. They were published in 1887 as ‘Burmah: a series of one hundred photographs illustrating incidents connected with the British Expeditionary Force to that country, from the embarkation at Madras, 1st Nov, 1885, to the capture of King Theebaw, with many views of Mandalay and surrounding country, native life and industries’. There were two editions, one with albumen prints, one with autotypes, and a set of lantern slides was issued.
In 1896, Hooper retired from military service in the grade of colonel and lived in England until his death in 1912. – A number of his photographs are collected in the archives of the British Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
See also
Other notable photographers of 19th-century Burma:
- John McCosh
- Felice Beato
- Linnaeus Tripe
- Philip Adolphe Klier
- Max Henry Ferrars
