Village de Hamameh, Haute-Egypte, plate 21 from the album "Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie" (1852)
1849/51, printed 1852
Medium
Salted paper print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 14.9 × 20.9 cm (5 7/8 × 8 1/4 in.); Album page: 30.1 × 42.8 cm (11 7/8 × 16 7/8 in.)
Classification
salted paper print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
144218
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
**Village de Hamameh, Hautegypte** (plate 21 from Maxime Du Camp's album *Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie*, 2) offers a captivating glimpse into 19th Upper Egypt. Captured during French photographer and writer Maxime Du Camp's 1849–51 alongside Gustave Flaubert, this salted paper print depicts the modest village of Hamameh nestled along the Nile. As one of the earliest photographic travel albums, it documents the landscapes, architecture, and daily life of Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, Syria, blending adventure with artistic documentation at a time when photography was still in its infancy. The salted paper print medium, a pioneering calotype process refined from William Henry Fox Talbot's inventions, produces the image's signature soft, matte tones and subtle gradations. Printed in 1852, these modest dimensions (14.9 × 20.9 cm) belie their historical weight: they represent some of the first photographs to bring the "Orient" to European audiences, fueling Romantic fascination with exotic cultures. Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago's Photography and Media department, this work highlights photography's power to preserve fleeting scenes. Du Camp's precise compositions not only showcase vernacular Egyptian architecture—mud-brick homes and communal spaces—but also underscore the era's cultural curiosity, bridging East and West through light and shadow. A window to a pre-modern Nile Valley, it invites visitors to ponder how early images shaped our global imagination.
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...