Vue générale des ruines de Baâlbek, prise à l'Est
September 15, 1850
Medium
Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions
Image: 16.2 × 21.7 cm (6 3/8 × 8 9/16 in.) Mount: 12 5/8 × 18 1/2 in. (32 × 47 cm) Frame: 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.376.155
Tags
Art Historical Context
Captured in 1850 by Maxime Du, a pioneering French photographer and writer, *Vue générale des ruines deâlbek, prise à l'Est* offers a stunning early photographic vista of the ancient Roman ruins Baalbek (ancient Heliopolis) in modern-day Lebanon. Taken from the east, the image showcases the site's monumental columns and weathered architecture, evoking the grandeur of a lost empire amid dramatic shadows and vast stone expanses. Du Camp created this during his transformative 1849–1850 journey through Egypt and the Levant alongside Gustave Flaubert, using photography to document exotic landscapes...
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...