Between 1859 and 1905, a number of photographers, working from the Maghreb to Turkey, collectively amassed a vast documentation of the region's landscape, towns and monuments. "Gardens of Sand" (by Nassar, Almarcegui & Worswick) unites 90 original photographs, mostly hitherto unpublished, by photographers such as James Robertson, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, G. Lekegian, Antoine Beato, Felix Bonfils, Otto Shoefft, Emile Bechard and Sulayman Al-Hakim of Damascus.
During the 19th century, the Middle East 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. 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.
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.
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.
You can buy the book from the Amazon link on the right, and read the full review article here.
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