The region now described as the Middle East became a focus for explorers and photographers from the early 1840s, reflecting Western colonial interest in the archaeology of ancient sites and the exploration of biblical sites. The Library houses a copy of the thirty-sixth edition of Alexander Keith’s Evidence of the Truth of Christian Religion (1848) copiously illustrated with engravings after daguerreotypes of the landscape of Palestine and Syria taken by Keith’s son, George. One of the few British books illustrated with engravings after daguerreotypes, the Preface argues that photography “imparts a still deeper conviction of the defined precision of the sure word”.
Photographers flocked to the Holy Land and ancient Egypt in great numbers during the 1850s, an indication of growing tourist and diplomatic interest in the region. The French photographer, Auguste Salzmann, arrived in Jerusalem in 1853, as did the Scotsman, James Graham. The Odessa watchmaker, Mendel Diness, appeared in 1856, and began to supply explorers and diplomats with photographs of the city’s key territories and religious sites, such as the album assembled by the Italian adventurer Ermete Pierotti. Diness was in turn displaced in Jerusalem by the more commercially minded studio of James Robertson. Other photographers of the city in the GRI special collections include Frank Mason Good, Francis Frith, Gabriel de Rumine, and John Cramb.
The 1860s saw more organized photographic excursions to the Middle East, including those of the photographer, Francis Bedford, commissioned by Queen Victoria, and the visits of the British Ordnance Survey and Palestine Exploration Fund. But perhaps the most elaborate were those of the French art collector and archaeologist, the duc de Luynes, who led two exploratory missions to Palestine and Jordan in 1864 and 1866. His purpose was, for the first time, to survey systematically and to photograph the cities and archaeological sites of the Dead Sea basin. The GRI holds the archive of the duc de Luynes, including his three-volume posthumous publication Voyage d'exploration à la mer Morte, à Petra, et sur la rive gauche du Jourdain (1874). The work of his two photographers, Louis Vignes and Henri Sauvaire, is also extensively represented.
The GRI resouces include the photographs of those who established studios in cities from the late 1860s, such as Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus beginning in the late 1860s. This includes examples by the Bonfils family, Tancrède Dumas, and Pascal Sébah. Embedded in imperial networks, their photography reveals the gradual expansion of a market for photography amongst both colonial and local customers throughout the Middle East.
Image: Abdullah Mirza Qajar (Iranian, 1850-1909). [Radkan: Mil-i Gharb Radkan], Iran. Ca. 1883-1896. Albumen print. Getty Research Institute, 2021.R.15-21r.