Palais de Karnak, Salle Hypostyle Prise au Nord; Thèbes, plate 35 from the album "Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie" (1852)
1849/51, printed 1852
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 16.7 × 21 cm (6 5/8 × 8 5/16 in.); Album page: 29.8 × 42.8 cm (11 3/4 × 16 7/8 in.)
Classification
salted paper print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
144233
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
Step into the grandeur of ancient Egypt through Maxime Du Camp's *Palais de Karnak, Salle Hypostyle Prise au Nord; Thèbes*, plate 35 from his seminal 1852 album *Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et*. Captured between 1849 and 1851, this salted paper print vividly documents the Hypostyle Hall of Karnak's vast temple complex in Thebes—from the north, showcasing its forest of towering papyrus-bundle columns inscribed with hieroglyphs. At just 16.7 × 21 cm, the image packs monumental scale into an intimate format, now housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Photography and Media department. Du Camp, a pioneering French photographer and writer, created this during an epic journey alongside Gustave Flaubert. Using the calotype process—William Henry Fox Talbot's salted paper technique, which produced textured, one-of-a-kind positives from paper negatives—he immortalized Egypt's ruins amid the nascent days of photography. Printed in 1852, these works were among the first to photographically record such sites, blending artistic vision with scientific precision. This print holds immense historical value, offering a frozen glimpse of Karnak before modern restorations and tourism. It exemplifies 19th-century Orientalism, fueling European fascination with antiquity while advancing photography as a tool for archaeology and cultural preservation. A testament to early travel photography's power, it invites us to marvel at pharaonic splendor through a Victorian lens.
About the Artist
Maxime Du Camp · 1822–present
Maxime Du Camp (1822–1894) was a pioneering French photographer and writer whose adventurous spirit and technical innovation bridged literature and visual art during the mid-19th century. Born in Paris on February 8, 1822, to a prosperous family—his father a successful surgeon—Du Camp received a solid bourgeois education at the Collège Bourbon (now Lycée Condorcet), where he cultivated interests i...