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In less than 20 years of the birth of photography, many British photographers in India were documenting the sights of the land that they found themselves in, monuments that they beheld with wonder, faces and costumes, men and women of different types and plying different trades and professions
More than 25 years before that, a photographer, active in Galveston, Texas, was advertising in the local newspaper that he had, in his Gallery, on sale, "Views of Churches, Cotton Presses, Principal Buildings, Bay and Wharf, also nine bird’s-eye views of the city, comprising the whole town ..." Hardly any photographer advertises his wares or skills in this manner today, but this is how it all was once. In 1839, the birth of photography had been formally announced in France, and within less than 20 years of that, photography had caught on like a fever, and a staggering number of photographers all over the world had set up shop. Heliographs, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, albumen silver prints, ambrotypes: terms such as these were entering common vocabulary. The times were heady.
Quite naturally, different men moved in different directions, or, at least, looked at things differently as photographers. Someone like Roger Fenton created for a publisher a body of photographic work on the Crimean War (1851-1855) that is still regarded as among the most valued records of its times; Matthew Brady’s photographs of the Civil War brought home to the average American the grim reality of war: grisly sights of bodies strewn on the fields of battle; in India, where many European and some American photographers headed from the 1850s onwards, Felice Beato documented, in the form of searing photographs, the carnage that came in the wake of the Great Uprising of 1857. And so on. But there were others, many of them, who viewed life with gentler eyes. Especially, in India. Sights of the land that they found themselves in, monuments that they beheld with wonder, faces and costumes, men and women of different types and plying different trades and professions: it is these that interested them and, as they shrewdly found out, also many of their patrons. This, then, is what they were often documenting.
One such photographer was the relatively little-known John Edward Sache, a very sizeable group of whose photographs is in the famed Alkazi Collection of Photography. Sache was not his original name, to be sure. In Prussia, where he was born, he bore the name Johann Edvart Zachert, but everything changed, including his name when he moved to the United States. What brought him, however, from that land to India is not recorded — to make a fortune here with his skills, might be a good guess — but we know that 1864 found him in Calcutta where, rather quickly, he formed a partnership with another photographer, Westfield, their firm coming to be known as "Sache and Westfield". Calcutta was where riches were and great curiosity resided. Soon the twosome were busy taking portraits, preparing a ‘selection of topographical and architectural views for sale’, and winning acclaim for their work, several medals being awarded to their photographs by the Bengal Photographic Society. Success had come. But apparently, Sache and Westfield were two very different persons. Almost inevitably, the partnership broke up after a few years. But Sache flourished. The next few years saw him expand his business considerably. He opened a studio in Nainital, in addition to the one in Calcutta. And then, came what were known as ‘seasonal studios’, a practice many photographers adopted so as to be able to work the whole year round, some places being too hot, others too cold in different months. Sache, we find, had a whole network of studios: Calcutta apart, at Nainital, at Mussoorie, and at Lucknow. There is also evidence of his having spread out, with the help of his son, Alfred, to Meerut, Cawnpore and Benares. What made him personally move out and reach out in a carefully chosen direction was the work of that celebrated photographer, Samuel Bourne, who was already a legend in the field. Bourne had been photographing the Himalayas with spectacular success, and it is towards the same mountains that Sache headed, north of Nainital. In his method, and approach, he was so close to Bourne that many of his photographs continue to be confused with those of Bourne himself. In any case, what endeared him to his clients were his views of places like his beloved Nainital. The view of Nainital reproduced here might contain what have been described as "recurring elements in picturesque compositions — a stretch of water, well-placed foliage and human presence", but it also has a gentleness, an air of affecting calm that keeps drawing you to itself. There is more than technique in it: the artist in Sache shines through here. Sache also photographed Indian ‘types’ — a genre that was very popular among his British clients — posing with their characteristic implements of work, a counterpart of ‘Company’ paintings so to speak, but it is his views of India that are his true legacy. "(We have) ready for sale", he advertised in the Pioneer of Lucknow in March, 1868, "a new and large selection of over 500 10x12 plates of Nynee Tal, Bheem Tal, Almorah, Byzanauth, Bareilly, Delhi, Lucknow, Cawnpore, Calcutta and Bengal Views." He did indeed, and one can see them, a century and half later, living another life in the Alkazi collection.
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