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supposedly made 1700 photographs in the course of his
grand tour, and published a number of them as original
prints after his return to England, but he was not a techni-
cally profi cient photographer and most of his surviving
prints are in poor condition. Pierre Trémaux, a French
architect who spent seven years in North Africa and
the Near East beginning in 1847, has an almost equally
strong claim to being the fi rst to make calotypes in the
Middile East. Trémaux intended a monumental book
illustrated with original salt prints made from his nega-
tives, but Voyages au Soudan Orietental, dans l’Afrique
Septentrionale at dans L’Asie Mineure, Executes en
1847à 1854 was apparently never completed, though
parts were published. The rare surviving examples of
Trémaux’s work are in poor condition, and it is clear
he was neither especially talented nor skilled, but his
Voyages was the fi rst of the photographically illustrated
works on Egypt, Palestine and other areas of the Near
East subsequently by the more gifted photographers
of this period. Maxime DuCamp, traveled throughout
the Orient 1849-50 in company with Gustave Flaubert,
the French novelist. DuCamp sailed up the Nile as far
as Abu Simbel in Nubia, and went on to photograph
in Palestine and Syria. The result of this tour, Egypte,
Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852), is an album contain-
ing 125 salt prints made from the original negatives by
Blanquart-Evrard in Lille, that is one of the major—and
best known works of 19th century European photog-
raphy. Félix Teynard, a civil engineer, travelled up the
Nile as far as the Second Cataract, above Abu Simbel
in Nubia, in 1851–52. He took 160 negatives, and when
he returned to France began to sell prints from them in
installments. The photographs in Egypt et Nubie, Sites et
Monuments les Plus Interessants pour l’Etude de l’Art
et de l’Histoire (1858) are considerably more beautiful,
sophisticated, and compelling than any image in Du-
Camp’s Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie—but because
Teynard’s album is considerably rarer than DuCamp’s,
it was forgotten for decades and was overshadowed by it
in the histories. The Americans Leavitt Hunt and Nathan
Flint Baker became the fi rst Americans to photograph
in Egypt and Jerusalem during their Grand Tour of the
Orient 1851/52. The trip resulted in about 60 negatives,
which Hunt and Baker planned to print and market in
the United States; the plan, however, collapsed, very
few prints were ever made, and no more than a handful
have ever appeared on the market. Hunt’s and Baker’s
images are mostly pedestrian, but their rarity makes
them among the most desirable Egyptian photographs.
Whether Hunt and Baker encountered Teynard on the
Nile is an interesting question. The year after, 1853–54,
the French born and Parisian trained American John
Beasly Greene, made the fi rst of three trips to Egypt to
photograph and excavate. Greene was the fi rst trained
egyptologist who was also a trained photographer, and

his images include some of the most haunting made in
Egypt. Greene intended to publish his work in album
form, but the album never materialized even though
prints had been commissioned from Blanquart-Evrard.
Greene died shortly after returning to Egypt for the
third time; he was 24. The Alsatian painter and amateur
archaeolgist August Salzmann, spent several months
in Jerusalem in 1854, photographing the architecture
of Jerusalem; on a second trip, he photographed else-
where in the Holy Land. Salzmann’s Jerusalem, vues
et monuments de la ville sainte de l’époque judaïque
au present was published in 1856. Louis-Constantin-
Henri-François-Xavier de Clerq, joined an exploratory
mission to Syria in 1859 and used the opportunity to
travel throughout the Mediterranean. Voyage en Orient,
1859–60, a six volume work containing 222 original
prints made by Blanquart-Evrard that is highly prized
today. Somewhat later, the American-born German
Jacob August Lorent traveled extensively through the
Middle East. Particularly interested in photographing
buildings endangered by development, Lorent published
two noteworthy books: Egypten, Alhambra, Tlemsen,
Algier, Photographische Skizzen (1861) and Jerusa-
lem und seine Umgebung. Photograpische Sammlung
(1865). The Englishman Francis Frith is undeniably
one of the pivotal fi gures on this period. Primarily an
entrepreneur, Frith made three extended trips to Egypt,
in 1856/57, 1857/58, and 1859/1860. He used three
different cameras, the largest for plates 15 × 19 inches.
Egypt and Palelastine Photographed and Described by
Francis Frith (1858–60) was the fi rst of seven collec-
tions of Middle Eastern photographs published by Frith
by 1862. They established his reputation and enabled
him to create a picture service that controlled over 4000
images. Other photograophers active in this period in-
clude the English amateur John Shaw Smith, who made
over three hundred calotype negatives during a two year
tour of the Orient, 1850–52, for his own private use.
Théodule Dévéria, like his friend John Beasly Greene,
was an archaeologist, and a prolific photographer,
though much of his work has not survived; and Frédéric
Auguste Bartholdi, better known as the sculptor of the
Statue of Liberty, who made two extended trips up the
Nile. Finally, there was James MacDonald, a sergeant
in the Royal Engineers, who was associated with the
Ordnance surveys of Jerusalem and the Sinai. These are
among the dozens who were active as photographers
during this period, most of them making photographs
that were meant to appear in publications.
Anton Schranz, a Maltese, opened the fi rst profes-
sional studio in Cairo that catered to the tourist and
souvenir trade by April 1850, when Florence Night-
ingale—as she noted in the diary of her trip to Egypt
1849–50—bought souvenir prints from him to give to
relatives. By the end of the decade, W. Hamerschmidt, a

EGYPT AND PALESTINE


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