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
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 p...
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...