19th-century photos on display at Louvre
abu dhabi — An 1881 photo of the holy city of Makkah and an image of a dead crocodile on a boat on the Nile in Egypt, are among the world’s earliest photographs that will be on display at the Louvre Abu Dhabi starting Thursday.
The museum’s fourth exhibition of the cultural season — ‘A World of Exchanges, Photographs 18421896: An Early Album of the World’ — explores the development of photography in a rare display of ancient images taken by travellers and sailors in the Middle East, Asia, India and the Americas.
Running from Thursday until July 13, the first-ever photography exhibition at the museum traces the evolution of photography as a form of documentation and an instrument of understanding the world and its people. The exhibition is set to immerse visitors of the Louvre Abu Dhabi in fascinating stories and discoveries, through its wide selection of historic images.
More than 250 of the earliest photographs in the world taken from 1842 to 1896, including images from 44 countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, the Philippines and elsewhere, are featured at the exhibition.
Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, said: “The Louvre Abu Dhabi aims to tell the story of humanity, and photography is one of the important tools that has contributed to the documentation of the history of the world and its diverse cultures.”
At a Press conference held to announce the details of the exhibition, Manuel Rabate, director of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, said: “We are inviting people back to the old days of photography.”
Part of the photos are portraits of
> A World of Exchanges, Phot graphs 1842-1896: An Early Album of the World’
> Louvre Abu Dhabi
> From April 25 to July 13
Algerian people in Paris taken in 1840s; an anonymous portrait of a boy in Mexico, which was taken in 1848; a portrait of sailor Geledi, taken in Chad in 1847; and beautiful portraits of Indians in South America-Brazil taken in 1871.
The exhibition will display works by prominent international photographers, including Charles Guillain, a French ship’s captain who took part in a diplomatic voyage down the coast of Africa in 1847-48; Desire Charnay, an archaeologist who photographed the first pre-Hispanic sites in Mexico; Kassian Cephas, the first Indonesian to become a professional photographer; and Egyptian military engineer Muhammad Sadiq Bey, who took the first photographs of the holy places in Makkah and Madina in 1881.
WHAT, WHERE, WHEN
There has always been a natural connection between countries and this can be portrayed by images.”
Christine Barthe, exhibition’s curator