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Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia. Illustrated by One Hundred Stereoscopic Photographs, Taken by Francis Frith for Messrs. Negretti and Zambra...
London: Smith, Elder and Co., 65, Cornhill, M.DCCC.LXII. 4to, original blind-stamped maroon cloth, gilt-stamped upper cover and spine with ibis and flower ornament, a.e.g. 240 pp., 100 stereographic photographs on printed mounts. A beautifully designed volume illustrated with a splendid series of one hundred stereographic photographs of ancient ruins. British photographer Francis Frith (1822–1898) made three trips to the Holy Land between 1856 and 1859. His photographs, many of them masterful works that established him as a major photographer, sought to confirm the historical authenticity of the places, and by extension, the events, recorded in the Bible—a response to current debates involving science and religion, offering more “factual” photographic images in contrast to such romantic works as the lithographs of David Roberts. Frith also viewed his documentary efforts as an act of preservation, noting that “in addition to the corroding tooth of Time and the ceaseless drifting of the remorseless sand, Temples and Tombs are exposed to continued plundering…” (Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described). The stereoviews included in this volume were taken during Frith’s third expedition to the region. The accompanying texts are by eminent Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi, both a scholar and a draftsman, and Rev. Samuel Sharpe, an author with several books on Egyptian history to his credit. The book was warmly received by contemporary reviewers, the Photographic Journal proclaiming it “the most magnificent book of the season…a marvel of tyopgraphic and illustrative art” and the Art Journal describing it as “an intellectual feast...spread before us at a cost of travel and thought not to be lightly valued.” The publishers of Frith’s stereoviews, Negretti and Zambra, displayed the book at the International Exhibition of 1862, where it won a medal for “effective adaptation of stereo photography to book illustration” (Nickel). Negretti and Zambra sold “Stereoscopes specially adapted for use with this volume, compactly folded in an elegant pocket-book form, fit for the drawing room table,” an advertising slip for which is bound-in at the title page. “The books of Francis Frith inaugurated the first golden age of albumen-silver photographic illustration (1860–80) during which photographs of great visual strength were supplemented by supportive texts that were decidedly subordinate to the photographs. One of the most outspoken on the esthetics of photography, Frith was among the first photographers to successfully seize the opportunity of using the recently perfected glass-negative and albumen print process to establish a reputation as a master photographic book illustrator…During September, 1856 to July, 1857, he journeyed to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, where he made full-plate and stereo negatives” (Truthful Lens, p. 30). REFERENCES: Gernsheim, Incunablua, 172; Nickel, Douglas. Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine, p. 82. CONDITION: Very good, re-hinged, minor rubbing; a lovely, bright copy.
Item #3388
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