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The rare Blanquart-Evrard albums remained one of
the few sources for Benecke’s work until recent years.
The appearance of an unbound portfolio of 143 signed
and captioned prints or images by Benecke at auction in
Germany in 1992 has lead to it great increase in knowl-
edge about the artist’s Work. Following the dispersal of
this album, a second album with more than eighty pho-
tographs by Benecke was on the New York art market
in 2003 (now Wilson Centre for Photography; London).
Although fewer than forty of his images have appeared
in widely scattered publications since 1853, a clearer
understanding of his style is now emerging.
The largest number of Benecke’s known photographs
were taken in Egypt and Nubia. Often captioned in
French, signed and dated in the negative, the images
were made in Cairo, on the Nile, in the Sinai, various
villages of Upper Egypt, and the Sudan. Little- known
locations and even individuals are identifi ed precisely
in the captions. He also recorded ancient monuments
in Upper Egypt (February–March 1852), including the
temples of Kalabashie and Dakkeh and the Temple of
Amenophis ill at El Kab near Edfou, often adopting
steep raking angles or other unusual formats. Identifi -
able locations in Palestine include panoramic views of
Jerusalem and Hebron; Benecke’s broad, atmospheric
technique is particularly well adapted to landscapes or
cityscapes of this kind. On the return journey through
southern Europe Benecke photographed at a number
of well-known sites; including the Acropolis in Athens
(August 1852) and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
Benecke does not appear to have returned to the Near
East. An isolated View of Nazareth published by Perez
reportedly is dated 1858 in the negative; if this reading
of the date is correct, the image was probably dated and
printed belatedly.
Benecke’s warm, brown-toned prints are technically
imperfect, appearing slightly blurred when his human
subjects have moved during the exposure. In his most
successful portraits the subjects adopt a steadying pose
and lower or close their eyes during the exposure, as in
Zofi a, Woman of Cairo, in Harem Dress of 1852. This
image appeared in Blanquart-Evrard’s album Etudes
photographiques, 1re seire of 1853; it may be the earli-
est published photograph of an “Oriental,” a genre that
was to prove as popular in photography as it already
had been for some decades in painting.BENECKE, ERNEST
Benecke, Ernest and Louis Blanquart-Evard.
Zofi a, Femme du Caire.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © The J.
Paul Getty Museum.