Photography In 19th Century Egypt

Vintage Photography 19th Century Egypt

Having been involved with photography for some years, many years ago, I’ve always been interested in vintage photographs. Since the early eighties I’ve enjoyed buying vintage photographs when they became available. From our collection of vintage images we are offering this selection of Egyptian topographical photographs by Hippolyte Arnoux, G & C Zangaki, Sebah, Dillrich etc.

These antique photographs dating from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century are vintage images of the Egypt of the grand tour, sold to Victorian Grand Tourists in great numbers. Photography was still in its infancy and old photographs, like these vintage images, were shot on large unwieldy antique cameras with slow shutter speeds. Without good light, getting a sharp image was difficult and as each photograph had to be exposed for several minutes, any movement could be disastrous. This is apparent in many vintage photographs of early street scenes, in which ghostly figures, random walkers, pass or pause, before moving on again, sometimes appearing in the image several times in different locations.

I love vintage photography; vintage photos are our most immediate link to the past. A vintage photo of Japan, Korea or China is almost a glimpse into the seventeenth century, rather than the nineteenth, for their people and traditions had changed very little in the preceding two hundred years.

Travelling with a photographer in Kenya, in nineteen seventy-eight, we came across a portrait photographer with a studio in the back streets of Mombasa. Stepping into his studio, the ground floor of his modest house, was like stepping back to 1900.  A huge vintage full-plate camera’s polished brass lens gazed towards a low stage with a canvas backdrop painted with a faded classical landscape, not unlike the one in the background of Arnoux’s vintage photograph of a veiled woman with water pots. The dais was framed by papier-mâché fluted columns, hung with plastic flowers and carpeted with an antique Persian rug. Two ancient spotlights stood either side of the stage and a collection of aged props stood around the walls, including a musty satin cushion, on which babies to could adopt the classic poses.

We were very privileged to be allowed to watch him at work photographing a newly married couple. The backdrop had been changed, the landscape stood rolled in a corner and an ivory silk fourfold screen stood in its place. The shoot took place in an atmosphere of great dignity and seriousness, the old photographer directing his subjects with firm politeness. The groom wore a dark suit, his bride the national dress of brightly printed cotton wraparound skirt. In those days, in much of east Africa, the horsehair bustle was the height of fashion and it seemed important for the new bride to stand in semi-profile in order to display her enhanced bottom, which she did with great pride. My friend, the photographer, shot three rolls of 35mm film while the old man set up the one shot that he took, checking every detail again and again before we heard the heavy metal shutter clunk, rather than click.

Next day we returned to see the result. The photograph, although taken the day before, could have been a vintage photo taken fifty or sixty years earlier. I asked the old man if he photographed outside the studio. No, he said, he could no longer move the old camera without help. And he contented himself with portrait photography.

Vintage photography was not a subject that much interested me then, I didn’t buy my first vintage pics until some years later, when I came across an album of old photographs of Japan. The album itself was a work of art, its covers beautifully lacquered and inlaid with mother of pearl and ivory. The photographs inside were a topographical tour of Japanese cities and shrines. There were also portraits of geisha and samurai warriors, vintage photographs circa nineteen hundred that could easily have come from the studio in Mombassa. Each vintage photograph had been hand tinted in soft pastel shades, which I found quite charming, at the time. Later, I decided that I disliked these tinted images, preferring the original black and white, that seemed to me, much more evocative of the time they were created.

Vintage photographs were easy to find and cheap to buy in the early eighties and I bought and sold many vintage albums and individual vintage images, but at that time I didn’t collect anything, everything was for sale. I didn’t imagine that photography and vintage photographs would become so collectible and expensive. Antique photographs were easy to find, daguerreotypes, including stereo daguerreotypes turned up in auctions every week, sometimes boxes full. Vintage photographic panoramas from all over the British Empire, albums of vintage photos brought back from China by missionaries and grand tour albums full of antique photographs of antiques were available in every antique market and antique fair. It seemed like they would always be available.

Some people, like my friend Sean Sexton, did begin collecting antique and vintage photographs early enough to build important collections at very little expense. Sean’s book, Ireland, Photographs 1840 – 1930 (Laurence King 1994) contains examples of important historical vintage photography including extraordinary images of the clearances, the uprising and many vintage photographs of important Irish revolutionaries. His later book: The Plant Kingdoms of Charles Jones (Thames & Hudson 1998) was the result of one lucky find in Bermondsey Antique Market. Late in the day, for very little money, Sean found a box of vintage photographs. Each vintage image featured a beautifully photographed plant, fruit or vegetable. The box contained a very large number of these vintage photographs taken by Jones while he was official photographer at Kew Gardens. Vintage photographs by Jones now sell for thousands of pounds and Sean has his pension.

My own collection of vintage photography is far more modest, but I would like to think that some of the vintage photographs offered would start someone else on the road to building a small collection of historic photographic images.

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