Burlingham’s earliest Alpine films suffered a classic silent-film catastrophe before most audiences ever had the chance to see them. In 1913, while he was working for London’s British and Colonial Kinematograph Company, he had filmed ambitious ascents of the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, along with other Alpine expeditions. The original negatives were sent to the company’s processing operation on Endell Street, but a fire there in October destroyed them before duplicate prints could be made. That timing made the loss especially devastating: the films were not merely damaged copies of surviving works but the sole photographic records of Burlingham’s pioneering climbs. Much of his broader travelogue output would eventually disappear as well, leaving only fragments for modern researchers. A nearly complete print of The Ascent of the Matterhorn was remarkably rediscovered in 1953 inside a cabinet in Zermatt, Switzerland, but the original negative was reportedly lost in an Atlantic shipwreck. The surviving print is now regarded as the only known copy and as an important early document of an Alpine ascent, while the Mont Blanc material appears to have vanished entirely.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1910s
The London Processing-Plant Fire That Erased Burlingham’s First Alpine Masterpieces
Frederick Burlingham and the British and Colonial Kinematograph Company / 1910s
Burlingham’s earliest Alpine films suffered a classic silent-film catastrophe before most audiences ever had the chance to see them. In 1913, while he was working for London’s British and Colonial Kinematograph Company, he had filmed ambitious ascents of the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, along with other Alpine expeditions. The original negatives were sent to the company’s processing operation on Endell Street, but a fire there in October destroyed them before duplicate prints could be made. That timing made the loss especially devastating: the films were not merely damaged copies of surviving works but the sole photographic records of Burlingham’s pioneering climbs. Much of his broader travelogue output would eventually disappear as well, leaving only fragments for modern researchers. A nearly complete print of The Ascent of the Matterhorn was remarkably rediscovered in 1953 inside a cabinet in Zermatt, Switzerland, but the original negative was reportedly lost in an Atlantic shipwreck. The surviving print is now regarded as the only known copy and as an important early document of an Alpine ascent, while the Mont Blanc material appears to have vanished entirely.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.