The passage of time hardly shows on many photographs. An idyllic sunset on the Nile exudes a perennial serenity and a pristine beauty, which endures to this day. This landscape, awesome by its poetic realism, reflects its distinct artistic quality intended by the photographers Lehnert & Landrock: Rudolf Franz Lehnert (1878-1948) and Ernst Heinrich Landrock (1878-1966).
The photographs of Cairo, taken between 1868-1869, by Frank Mason Good are also remarkable. Good journeyed across the Middle East from the age of 27 over a nine-year period. His photographs are considered among the most distinguished collections of views executed in the region during the 19th century. The “House with Mashrabiyas” (a screened window overlooking the street), and “Cairo Street” both taken between 1868 and 1869, are striking by their atmospheric realism and their contemporaneousness.
Nassar reminds us that the Middle East during the 19th century “was one of the world’s most heavily photographed places. More than 280 photographers arrived in the region by the early 1880s.” While numerous archeological, scientific or military missions were sent to document the countries of the region, some individuals traveled either for personal reasons to discover and photograph ancient lands or to serve the increasing number of tourists wanting photographs.
The photographs shown in “Gardens of Sand” were taken by some of the most prominent photographers and they are also among the earliest of the Middle East. They required a complex technique, which yielded an unparalleled artistry never found in later photographic technologies of both the 20th and 21st centuries.
There has been an increased demand for early photographs and the market shows no indication of slowing down. The high price of approximately $3 million for the sale of Daguerreotypes by a talented but unknown French photographer, Joseph-Philibert Giraud de Prangey, shows the increasing interest in good early photographs. Sotheby’s London book department continues to host a remarkable number of interesting early photographic books. Speaking of photographic albums, it is interesting to know that the scarcity of 19th century photographers is due to the acid contained in the album pages.
“As much as 98 percent of the work purchased in the shops of Middle Eastern 19th-century photographers was carefully pasted down onto album pages that have proved to be highly acidic…Almost universally the 19th-century photographic albums supplied by the photographers of Cairo or Istanbul, who created these pictures, have caused them to fade away into acidified oblivion,” says Worswick.
Furthermore, around the mid-1880s, Thomas Cook brought the first package tours to the Middle East. The rising number of tourists triggered a high demand for photographs. As photographers began the production of large quantities of commercial photographs, their work lost the artistry displayed in the early years of photography.
One of the most accomplished photographers of the 19th-century, Francis Frith, took pictures of Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria between 1856 and 1859. He produced seven books depicting the three challenging journeys he made across the Middle East. When these photographs were exhibited in London, they caused a sensation.
Photography arrived later in the Arabian Peninsula. The first known pictures of Arabia were taken by an Egyptian engineer and officer known as Muhammad Sadiq during his survey in 1861. He was the first photographer to take pictures of Madinah. “Gardens of Sand” features a rare copy print of Sadiq’s original photograph of Madinah from Bab Al-Sham (circa 1899) made by the only known Arab photographer of the Middle East, Sulayman Al-Hakim of Damascus, circa 1890.
The scarcest pictures of the Middle East are photographs of the Holy Cities. The photographs featured in “Gardens of Sand” include one taken by Sulayman Al-Hakim and three by Sayyid Abd Al-Ghaffar, a Makkah based physician who practiced photography from around 1884 and was most likely the first native Arabian photographer.
One of the pictures is an 1880s copy print made of one of Abd Al-Ghaffar’s photographs of the Kaabah and credited to Pascal Sebah of Istanbul — signed Abd Al-Ghaffar prints of Makkah are exceedingly rare. The prints in this book were found in Hyderabad, India in the 1970s.
As we glance through the book, we cannot fail to notice that most of the photographs are meant for a western audience expecting to see the images of the Orient they had in their mind.
“In general terms, 19th-century photography of the Near East tended to be Orientalist in nature. Its theme, choice of subjects and settings, captions and general application at the time were more of a reflection of Europe’s historical imagery of the East,” says Nassar.
Europeans were fascinated by photographs such as the decoration of Oriental homes, which fulfilled their romanticized vision of the Orient.
The photographs of “The Stambouli House” by Felix Bonfils in the 1870s and Sulayman Al-Hakim during the 1890s remind us of the description of similar homes by well known French writers such as Pierre Loti and Alphonse de Lamartine in “Voyage en Orient” in 1835.
“It appears that despite the ‘objective’ character of the photograph capturing an object in place in time, photographers of the region were not capable of seeing what was in front of their eyes. Choosing instead to present to their clients and customers images of a familiar Middle East that do very little to challenge the region’s image in the Western imagery. But that should not undermine the fact that the 19th century photographs, such as those in this collection, are works of art in themselves” says Nassar.
In that sense, these photographs helped disseminate on a wider scale stereotypes of the Orient whose effect can still be felt to this day. However, this collection of beautiful and rare photographs, despite their Orientalism, represent a remarkable pictorial archive of the Middle East.