General View of Monuments Carved into Bedrock with Photographer's Dahabieh. Abu Simbel (1851–1852): Art, History and Details

General View of Monuments Carved into Bedrock with Photographer's Dahabieh. Abu Simbel (1851–1852) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Félix Teynard (French, 1817–1892).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Teynard, a civil engineer, may have learned photography for his 1851–52 tour of Egypt, which he undertook “to study certain questions of personal interest.” In 1858 he published his photographic record of ancient sites, the most comprehensive to date, as a book of salted paper prints. Teynard traveled by dahabieh, a small passenger boat visible in this image. He asked his readers to grant some indulgence for photographers carrying out such painstaking work in an arduous locale like Egypt. “A nomad, his working method is always provisional, and the delicate preparations for his photography must be carried out on a small sailing boat rocking in the water, or under a tent standing in the midst of the desert.”

Object facts

• Title: General View of Monuments Carved into Bedrock with Photographer's Dahabieh. Abu Simbel
• Date: 1851–1852
• Creator attribution: Félix Teynard (French, 1817–1892)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: salted paper print from a paper negative
• Dimensions: Image: 24.8 x 30.9 cm (9 3/4 x 12 3/16 in.); Paper: 26.7 x 35.5 cm (10 1/2 x 14 in.); Matted: 50.8 x 61 cm (20 x 24 in.)
• Collection: PH - French 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2010.268

Collection credit

Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.