Middle Eastern travel photograph album

By the mid-1800s, the Middle East had become of great interest to Britain. Having been a target for British Imperialism for decades due to its geography and resources, it was now attracting tourism. Not long after the development of photography, people began to dream about the landscape, architecture, and people of foreign lands - all of which seemed exotic and romantic.

By the 1860s, British tour operators such as Cook's Tours were offering package tours to the Middle East. Generally only accessible to wealthy upper-class gentlemen, these tours often took a circular route encompassing destinations such as Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, and Egypt. The trend for such travels was even endorsed by the Royal Family - King Edward VII embarked on his own well-documented Middle Eastern tour in 1862.

The flourishing tourist trade in these areas attracted photographers from all over Europe, keen to document a world strikingly different from their own. Some set up studios from which to produce prints specifically for the tourist trade, a form of the modern day travel postcard. Photographers such as Felix Bonfils and the Zangaki brothers set up studios in Lebanon and Egypt respectively.

The order of these photographs in this volume suggests that the owner of the album collected them whilst following a circular route on their tour of the Middle East typical of the tourist routes of the time; starting in Israel and finishing in Egypt. Included here are photographs from Bonfils and the Zangaki brothers, as well as other unknown trade photographers of the time.

(Delve further into Egypt's archaelogical sites in our exhibition of Drawings from Belzoni's expedition of 1817-18.)