Earth’s photographic documentation started immediately after the disclosure of the daguerreotype process, in the 40’s of the 19th century. Travel photography reached its highest point with the process of humid collodium, in spite of requiring large size glass plates, which were covered with silver salts in the very place where they were exposed and processed, while still humid. With improvised itinerant laboratories, such as carts, tents and even boats, photographers left to discover distant places in the West American border, in expeditions across Africa and Asia.
There was an increasing interest in “photographic news” from exotic countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Arabia and particularly from Egypt. Famous photographers set up in Cairo and opened agencies in Paris and London to sell their images, a flourishing business for decades.
Photographic experiences in Egypt, during the 19th century, were indeed a laboratory to test photographic techniques. Climatic conditions, political troubles and means of transport available affected the work of the first photographers travelling across the Middle East. Their wooden cameras, used until the end of the century, were particularly sensitive to the heath, humidity variations and rough transport.
Although it was possible to purchase the main chemical products, photographic plates and paper in Cairo and other nearby cities from 1850 onwards, most of the great travellers carried all the necessary equipment with themselves. This would certainly include a yellow tent, sustained by an interior structure weighing 7 to 10 Kg. The inner space would be no more of 2 or 3 m². A protective shadow was often difficult to find, so we can imagine the high temperatures that the photographers had to bear inside their tents. Windblown dust and sand, insects, emulsions drying quickly with the high temperatures and chemical steams were some other difficult circumstances these men had to face, which allow us to value their high motivations.
This was a time when Earth’s age became a major issue in the scientific discussion about natural selection and the origin of Man. Therefore, monuments and evidence of ancient cultures were among the most appreciated subjects. The use of Photography by Archeology was immediate, and those images had a large impact in a wide range of social classes, who were able to admire temples, human figures and testimonies of ancient religions, scripts or depictions of everyday life from very ancient and different cultures.
The images in this exhibition were taken in the period between two expeditions to the East: Eça de Queiroz’s travel, when the Suez Channel was launched in 1869, and Leite de Vasconcelos’ journey, when the Congress of Egyptology took place in Cairo in 1909.
Eça de Queiroz was one of the greatest Portuguese writers from the 19th century.
Leite de Vasconcelos was an archaeologist, an ethnographer and a philologist. He was one of the founders of the National Museum of Archaeology (Museu Nacional de Arqueologia) in Lisbon.
The pictures in this exhibition, presented at the National Museum of Archaeology in 2008, were selected from the photo collections of the Institute of Museums and Conservation, which document the great photographic adventure of the 19th century.