From Alexandria to Abu Simbel

This exhibition of the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection showcases around sixty vintage prints that offer insights into the era of early photographs, 1849-1875.

Soon after the invention of photography (1839) the first photographers travelled to the Nile to take pictures of ancient Egyptian monuments. Most of them were artists fascinated by this »new« medium who showed their work at exhibitions. In addition to Egypt, most of them also visited the Holy Land, Syria and Lebanon. In Egypt they travelled by boat to Abu Simbel in the far south, with some even continuing on to Nubia and the Sudan.

Today, these journeys may not sound spectacular, and the resulting body of photographs may not be that impressive, but we should remember the conditions under which they travelled and the means they had at their disposal to produce these fascinating images.

The exhibition presents works by, for example, Maxime Du Camp (France, 1822-1894), Louis de Clercq (France, 1836−1901), John Beasley Greene (USA, 1832−1856) and Francis Frith (England, 1822−1898) whose works are now, for example, on show in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or the Getty Center in Los Angeles.