148
The most frequest subjects of Benecke’s portrait
studies are women, some heavily robed, others in
showy “harem” attire (possibly professional dancers)
or seminude. He also, however, depicted musicians,
a slave dealer, a Bedouin chieftain with his retinue,
and groups of children. Scenes of everyday life show
a peasant pumping water from the Nile, a potter in his
workshop, and the autopsy of a crocodile on ship board.
He also made very fi ne studies of trees (two published
by Blanquart-Evrard) and of vernacular architecture in
Egypt and Palestine.
Several signed prints by Benecke bear the stamp of
the well-known photographer Charles Marville on the
verso, indicating that some or all prints from Benecke’s
paper negatives were not produced by the photographer
himself. Prints of all Benecke images are rare, and many
are unique; the negatives are not known to have survived.
Despite Benecke’s lack of interest in marketing his work,
groups of his ethnographic studies were acquired by
travelers to Egypt or the Mediterranean, including the
art historian Emile Prisse d’Avesnes, the well-known
sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, and the English
academic painter Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema. Some of
the prints are numbered in the negative; these notations,
which run well above the number three hundred, may
indicate Benecke’s intention to produce a large portfolio,
either of his own work or in collaboration with other
photographers, that has not been identifi ed.
It is now known that Joseph- Philibert Girault de
Prangey, not Benecke was the fi rst to photograph ev-
eryday life in the Near East. de Prangey made nearly a
thousand daguerreotypes during a voyage in 1844–45,
including perhaps a dozen portraits of Egyptians and
Turks. A handful of portrait studies, contemporary with
Benecke, survive from elsewhere in the Near East, but
Benecke’s work, nevertheless, remains the earliest im-
portant body of Near Eastern ethnographic studies.
Donald Rosenthal
See Also: Blanquart-Evrard, Louis-Desire; Egypt and
Palestine; Orientalism; Ottoman empire, European;
and Ottoman empire, Asian.
Further Reading
Aubenas, Sylvie and Jacques Lacarriere, Voyage en Orient, Paris:
Hazan,1999.
Colmar, Musee Bartholdl, D’aval en Amon: itlneraire pho-
tographique a travers l’Egypte (1850–1870), exh. cat.,
1997.
Howe, Kathleen Stewart, Revealing the Holy Land: The Pho-
tographic Exploration of Palestine, Santa Barbara: Santa
Barbara Museum of Art, 1997.
Howe, Kathleen Stewart, First Seen: Portraits of the World’s
Peoples 1840–1880 from the Wilson Centre for Photography,
Santa Barbara and London: Santa Barbara Museum of Art and
Third Millennium Publishing, 2004.
Jammes, Andre and Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of the French
Calotype, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
Jammes, Isabelle, Blanquart-Evrard et les origins de l’edition
photographiq ue francaise: catalogue raisonne des albums
photographiques edites 1851–1855, Geneva: Droz,1981.
Perez, Nissan, Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East
(1839 –1885), New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988.
Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew, “Evocative Images: Newly Discovered
Salt Prints Refl ect One Photographer’s Grand Tour in 1852,”
Archaeology, July/August 1994.
Willis, Deborah and Carla Wil1iaDlS, The Black Female Body:
A Photographic History, Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2002
Woodward, Richard B., “Ernest Benecke’s Lost Treasures,” The
New York Times Magazine, March 6, 1994.BENNETT, HENRY HAMILTON
(1843–1908)
American photographer and inventor
Originally a carpenter, Bennett injured his hand with his
own gun in the American Civil War. In 1875 he opened
a portrait photography studio in Wisconsin Dells (then
Kilbourn City), which is now a museum open to the
public. Bennett quickly realised that he could not sup-
port himself and his wife just from taking studio por-
traits and turned his attention to his local landscape. In
particular, the unusual sandstone geological formationsBENECKE, ERNEST
Bennett, Henry Hamilton. Wisconsin Dells.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © The J. Paul Getty
Museum.