John Burke (photographer)  John Burke was a photographer, best known for his photographs of the Second Anglo-Afghan War between 1878–1880. Burke was born in Ireland where he was a tradesman. He applied for a job in the British Army as an official photographer but travelled to Afghanistan at his own expense using heavy cameras that would have needed transporting on pack animals through mountainous regions. Burke's photographs have been grouped in albums with those of Benjamin Simpson and other photographers, so definitive attribution is not possible for some of his works.