Vue générale de la Nécropole de Thèbes (Gournah)
1849–50
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Mount: Approximately 32 x 47 cm (12 5/8 x 18 1/2 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.376.74
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the sun-baked sands of ancient Egypt with Maxime Du Camp's *Vue générale de la Nropole de ThèbesGournah)*, a salted paper print from a paper created during his 1849–50 expedition. This panoramic landscape captures the sprawling necropolis at Gournah, part of the vast Theban burial grounds near modern Luxor, where pharaohs and nobles rested for eternity amid rocky hills and temple ruins. Du Camp, a pioneering French photographer and writer, documented these timeless sites with a fresh eye, offering 19th-century viewers their first photographic glimpses of Egypt's wonders. As one of t...
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...