Femmes du Prince Phra-Kéo-Pha
1866
Medium
Albumen silver prints from glass negatives
Dimensions
19.9 x 27.7 cm (7 13/16 x 10 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.501 (45)
Tags
Art Historical Context
Emile Gsell’s 1866 work *Femmes du Prince Phra-Kéo-Pha* offers a rare photographic glimpse into mid-nineteenth-century Southeast Asian court life. Created as albumen silver prints from glass negatives, the image captures women associated with a regional prince, reflecting the period’s growing interest in documenting distant cultures through the camera lens. Gsell, a French photographer active in Indochina, used the relatively new medium to record royal and everyday subjects during France’s expanding presence in the region. The albumen process, prized for its fine detail and tonal range, allow...
About the Artist
Emile Gsell · 1838–1879
Emile Gsell (1838–1879) was a French photographer who became one of the earliest Western photographers to document Southeast Asia, particularly the ancient temples of Angkor in Cambodia. Born in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines in Alsace, France, Gsell traveled to Indochina in the 1860s, establishing a photographic studio in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City) that became a base for his documentary expedi...