Gardens of Sand: Commercial Photography in the Near East, 1859–1905

Inauguración:
28 de octubre, 19:00 h

Clausura:
14 de febrero de 2016

Colección Clark & Joan Worswick

Curador:
Clark Worswick

Museo Archivo de la Fotografía
República de Guatemala 34, Centro Histórico, del. Cuauhtémoc
Distrito Federal
T.: 2616 7057

Martes a domingo de 10:00 a 18:00 h

cultura.df.gob.mx
f Museo Archivo de la Fotografía

Between 1859 and 1905, a group of talented professional photographers settled in the cities of Istanbul, Smirna, Luxor, Cairo, Tunis, Beirut, Damascus and Mecca, thus inaugurating the photographic documentation of the Near East. This region’s visual construction is a conglomeration of the archaeological past, an orientialist imaginary and presages of future industrialization. It was also the fruit of joint efforts by various ethnic groups and their mixture of creeds: the commercial photographers active in the area in the second half of the nineteenth century—over 280 of them—were Armenian, Egyptian, British, Turkish, French, Greek, German, Italian, Persian and Arabic. All of them tried to reflect the essence of a land that was as fascinating to Western society as it was mythologized by it, through the newly born medium of photography.

Gardens of Sand presents a selection of eighty-six pictures: contemporary prints made through the digitization of the Worswick Collection, one of the most important of nineteenth-century photographs of North Africa and East and Southeast Asia.

Includes: Abd al-Ghaffar, Abdullah Frères, Sulayman Al-Hakim, Emile Béchard, Maison Berggren, Maison Bonfils, L. Fiorillo, Francis Frith Jr., Maison Garrigues, Frank Mason Good, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, Lehnert & Landrock, F. Quarelli, Otto Schoefft, Sebah & Joaillier, Frères Zangaki.