19
from daguerreotypes included views of Algiers, Beirut,
Damascus, and Baalbek.
For the French, an interest in the architectural pat-
rimony of France begun under the Commission for
Historic Monuments and photographed by the Missions
Heliographique extended to expeditions to document
the remains of the line of castles built by the Frankish
Kingdoms following the Crusades. In 1859-60, and on
a second journey (1862–63), Louis De Clercq (1836–
1901) accompanied historian Emmanuel-Guilluame Rey
and photographed Crusader castles in present day Syria,
Lebanon, and Libya. His work is contained in six albums
of 222 photographs, entitled “Voyage en Orient,” which
also included volumes devoted to Egypt, Jerusalem
and Palestine, and Spain. As part of his multi-volume
studies of architecture, Pierre Tremaux photographed
throughout Asia Minor and North Africa including
Tunis and Tripoli. In Aleppo, Albert Poche (1842–1930)
photographed archaeological sites, the castles of the
Crusaders, and ancient Christian churches from Aleppo
and northern Syria. By the 1860s there were a number
of photographic studios in Beirut and Damascus. The
Bonfi ls studio (1867–1918) in Beirut was responsible
for one of largest bodies of photography of the Near East
including North Africa. Georges Saboungi established
a Beirut studio in 1863 and published technical papers
and manuals in Arabic. And Suleiman Hakim’s studio
in Damascus in the 1870s produced both tourist views
and portraits.
The French colony of Algeria—the north came under
French domination in1830 and the French extended con-
trol to the south in the following decades—and its capi-
tal city Algiers, only a day’s journey from Marseilles,
received large numbers of colonial administrators and
visitors. Photographers documented the colonial ap-
paratus, as well as archaeological sites. Delamotte and
Alary made daguerreotypes of Meddea and Biskra in
- The young photographer and archaeologist John
B. Greene photographed in Constantine and accompa-
nied an 1856 expedition to excavate the ancient tumulus
tomb known as the Tomb of the Christian. He made a
series of photographs that thoroughly documented the
mound prior to its excavation. The Parisian commercial
photographer Felix Moulin, visiting Algeria at the same
time, reportedly made photographs with the expedition,
although those photographs have yet to be found. Moulin
placed in commercial release a number of photographs
which documented the colonial presence in Algeria,
scenes from Bedouin life, and a number of erotically
charged photographs of dancing girls that answered an
avid market for Orientalist fantasies of the harem. The
latter continued the subject and treatment of photographs
that he had staged in his Parisian studio and offered as
studies to artists. Charles Marville (1816–1880), after
completing the commission to document the changes to
Paris under Baron Haussman, photographed the colonial
and urban fabric of Algeria.
The erotic fantasies of the Orient supplied by Moulin
were elaborated by local studios later in the century and
can be read as a statement of colonial control. Malek
Alloula’s (1986) critical study of the cabinet cards and
later postcards that constituted an entire class of colo-
nialist images in Algeria is a landmark in post-colonial
studies. Alloula’s work examined the vernacular images
of semi-nude, erotically posed Algerian women within
the context of colonial systems of power and control.
The hundreds of photographs in circulation from the
1880s on indicate they number of commercial studios
participating in their creation.
Extensive photography in Tunisia, Morocco, and
Libya was delayed relative to that in Algeria or the
coastal regions. Tunisia was generally considered an
extension of Algeria, although without a French garrison
stationed there until late in the century it was considered
less stable and thus was visited less frequently by the
casual traveler. A full-blown trade in images for tour-
ists, as exemplifi ed by the volume of views of Tunisia
published by Cairo booksellers Lehnert and Landrock,
Picturesque North Africa, 1900, did not emerge until
the end of the century. Morocco, more closely associ-
ated with Spain than France, also emerged as a photo-
graphic site late in the 19th century. Moroccan views
were frequently appended to collections of views of
Moorish Spain, such as those by August Jacob Lorent.
The photography of Libya followed a bifurcated path.
The great Greco-Roman ruins near Tripoli—Leptis
Magna and Sabratha—were frequently included in the
itinerary of archaeologist/photographers, De Clerqc for
example, but exploration further inland was limited. The
fi rst major expeditions to be photographed were those
made by of Gerhard Rohlfs. A 1869 expedition along
the Libyan littoral was photographed by Emil Salingre.
Rohlfs himself photographed the 1873–74 expedition
to which traveled between oases in the Libyan Desert
(Drei Monate in der Libyschen Wuste, 1876). The oc-
cupation of Libya by Italian forces at the beginning of
the twehtieth century provided the impetus for the fi rst
major photographic survey and archive of Libya ac-
complished by Luca Comerio (1878–1940).
Kathleen Stewart Howe
See also: Lemercier, Lerebours and Bareswill;
Bonfi ls, Fèlix, Marie-Lydie Cabanis, and Adrien; Rey,
Guido; de Clercq, Louis; Delamotte, Philip Henry;
Orientalism; Marville, Charles; and Lorent, Jakob
August.Further Reading
Alloula, Malek, The Colonial Harem. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1986.