Collection of early photographs of North-Africa and the Middle East by several photographers who had worked in the region. The main part of this collection consists of carte de visite portraits by Wilhelm Hammerschmidt (ca. 1830-1869), from the 1860s. Most of them show Egyptians, including a porter carrying a large chest on his back and a blind man. Three outdoor photographs show a group of men, one holding a pipe almost as long as himself, a camel rider and two camels in profile. Two larger photographs by the firm of Pascal Sébah from Istanbul, date from the 1870s or 1880s and show a caravan halting in the desert. Of later date is the single image by the photographic duo Lehnert & Landrock, who worked in Tunis in 1904-1914. Their picture, which was popularly used in picture postcards, shows a small group overlooking an oasis near Tripoli. The largest and most artistic photograph is by the Swiss firm Schroeder & Cie and dates from the 1880s. This striking image shows the Mosque of Muhammad Ali in Cairo, with the crumbling remains of a rock and wall acting as repoussoir and a figure at the front watching from the shade. A strange stowaway in this collection is a single carte de visite by the Italian photographer Enrico Van Lint (1829-1882), of "Galileo's Lamp", the bronze lamp which Vincenzo Possenti created after a drawing by Leon-Battista Alberti in 1587 for the Pisa Cathedral.
With 4 of the cartes de visite labelled on the back and one stamped with a name; the paper of the Sebáh photograph with an inscription in English and the Schroeder with an inscription on the back. Some of the sheets or cards on which the photographs are mounted are somewhat tattered at the edges and the cartes de visite have probably been trimmed. Photograph by Lehnert & Landrock with a diagonal fold. All photographs are otherwise in very good condition.