Holy Land — Felix Bonfils and others | Finely-bound nineteenth-century album of photographs

Holy Land — Felix Bonfils, and others

Album of photographs of the Holy-Land, titled "Orient-Reise. 1894. Jerusalem." Ca. 1894

Oblong album (275 x 415 mm); with 39 albumen prints (largely 227 x 280 mm) mounted on stiff card leaves, including one large-scale panorama (227 x 850 mm) separated and mounted on three leaves, captioned and signed in the negative by Bonfils, one by Zangaki, and others unsigned, often with ink manuscript captions in German in the margins; occasional light toning, pale staining, and mild spotting, mostly affecting the card leaves and not the photographs, a silk strip joining the panorama's panels coming unstuck at extremities, one photograph with a small loss at corner, a few pencil annotations, a light wave in the leaves. Contemporary black morocco, gilt lettered front cover, gilt ruled spine and upper board, all edges gilt, watered silk endpapers, with brass corners and clasps; Light scuffing and soiling, a few small spots of wear at extremities, a thin area of surface-loss along the front joint, the brass a bit dulled.

A finely-bound, late nineteenth-century album of photographs showing the Holy-Land. The images were taken by photographers who were living and working in the Middle East — Felix Bonfils in Beirut, and the Zangaki Brothers in Cairo. These prints would have been sold to German tourists travelling in the Holy Land in 1894, who then had them mounted, captioned, and bound as a souvenir album when they returned home.

They show various sights in and around Jerusalem (Solomon's Temple, St. Anna's Church, Antonia's Tower, Tower of David and Hippicus, the interior of the Dome of the Rock, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Ecce Homo Arch, Tomb of the Virgin, Wailing Wall, Mount of Olives, Valley of Jehoshaphat, Garden of Gethsemane, Rock of the Apostles, and the Damascus, Zion, and Golden Gates), as well as views of Bethelhem, Jaffa, and the River Jordan. While people feature in many of the photographs, there are also three posed group portraits showing Syrian Bedouins, Whirling Dervishes, and group of Jews of Jerusalem.