476
the most hospitable conditions. Indeed, photographs
–daguerreotypes—were made in Egypt in November
1839, less than four months after the workings of the
daguerrotype process were fi rst made public. Over the
next 50 years at least 250 amateur and professional
photographers are known to have been active in the
Middle East, although the actual number was probably
somewhat greater; the introduction of amateur roll-fi lm
cameras in 1888 undoubtedly increased those numbers
substantially by the end of the century.
The history of photography of Egypt and Palestine
in the 19th century breaks down into four more or
less distinctive but overlapping periods, and the per-
sonalities involved include dedicated amateurs, both
tourists and residents (who were usually missionaries
or diplomats); trained as well as untrained men associ-
ated with archaeological or other offi cially sponsored
projects; and professionals, both European and local,
some based in Europe, others with studios in Cairo
or Jerusalem or some other Middle Eastern city who
catered to both the tourist and arm-chair traveler trade.
The fi rst period, 1839 to the mid 1840s, is marked by
efforts to use the daguerreotype process—some success-
ful, other total failures. The second period, spanning the
late 1840s and extending into the early 1860s is defi ned
by photographers using either paper or glass supported
negative processes to produce bodies of work usu-
ally (but not always) intended for distribution in some
form. The third period is marked by the proliferation
of local-based professional studios associated with the
tourist industry and the production of visual souvenirs
that begins in the early 1860s and extends into the late
80s, when the Kodak and similar cameras using com-
mercially made plates and fi lms enable travelers to take
their on photographs. The fourth and fi nal period extends
into the present day and is marked by the dramatic rise
and popularity snapshot photography and the resulting
decline and demise of professional studios catering to
the tourist trade. Throughout the 19th century, French
photographers predominated, with British second,
Germans and Austrian third, and other nationalities,
including Americans, Greeks and locals (most of whom
were Christians) comprising the balance.
The fi rst period was brief and included only a small
group of individuals who were able to produce suc-
cessful daguerreotypes in the diffi cult conditions of the
Middle East. The Frenchmen Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet
and Horace Vernet, and the Swiss–born Canadian
Pierre Gaspard Gustave Joly de Lotbinière took the
fi rst daguerreotypes made in Egypt in November and
December 1839, barely three months after the process
had been announced in Paris. (Vernet claimed to have
taught the Pasha, Mohammed Ali, to make daguerreo-
types.) Some of the plates made by these three men
were reproduced as engravings in N.P. Lerebours’Excursions Daguerriennes (1842), and several views
by Joly de Lotbinière of ancient Egyptian monuments
were transplated into lithographs for Hector Horeau’s
slightly earlier Panorama d’Égypte et Nubie (1841).
These were the fi rst photographically derived—and
therefore unquestionably authoritative—representations
of Middle Eastern scenes to reach the European public.
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (in Egypt 1843/44)
and André-Victor-Alcide-Jules Itier (in Egypt 1846/46)
were amateurs who made daguerreotypes to document
their travels for purely personal consumption; their col-
lections descended in their families and have remained
largely intact into recent years. Goupil-Fesquet, Vernet,
Joly de Lotbinière, and Girault de Prangey also included
Palestine in their travels and made souvenir views there
(Girault de Prangey made more plates of Jerusalem than
he did of any Egyptian site), while the only British citi-
zen known to have daguerreotyped in the Middle East,
George Skene Keith, a Scot and the brother of Thomas
Keith, spent fi ve months in Palestine with his father,
a clergyman, and made daguerreotypes views of sites
mentioned in the Bible that supposed offered proof of
the validity of old Testament prophesies. Keith’s plates
are known from the steel engraving copied from them
that illustrated his father’s book, Evidence of the Truth
of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal
Fulfi llment of Prophecy Particularly as Illustrated by
the History of the Jews and the Discoveries of Modern
Traveller (1844). (French images, even of Biblical sub-
jects, tended to be devoid of religious motives; whereas
the work of both British and American photographers
often had religious implications.) Few would-be da-
guerreotypists, however, had the determination or the
skill to work the process in the fi eld; a few, among whom
was the preeminent German Egyptologist Karl Richard
Lepsius, found it impossible. Such practical problems,
coupled with the labor-intensive and therefore expen-
sive effort required to produce accurate reproductions
of the daguerreotype image for publication, that what
photography was done in Egypt and Palestine before the
fi rst photographers using negative processes appeared
in the late 1840s, had little lasting impact.
The late 1840s into the early 1860s was the Golden
Age of photography in Egypt and Palestine, and it gener-
ated several bodies of work considered key monuments
in the history of photography. This period began when
photographers using one of the paper negative processes
(calotype or waxed paper processes) began to work in
the Middle East; when it ended, they were making glass
plate negatives using the wet collodion process. The
Rev. George Bridges, an English clergyman who began
a seven year Grand Tour of the Mediterranean in 1846,
may have been the fi rst make calotypes in the Middles
East, although he cannot be placed in Jerusalem until
November 1850 or in Egypt until January 1851. BridgesEGYPT AND PALESTINE
Hannavy_RT72353_C005.indd 476 7/5/2007 11:18:10 AM