Pascal Sébah

Studio portrait of models wearing traditional clothing from the provinces of Hedjaz (Hejaz), Yemen and Tripoli, Ottoman Empire (1873).

Photo prints by Turkish photographer (1823–1886) at the Library of Congress. I always like to see photos of ruins in the wild, so to speak, as they generally were in the 19th century before the imperatives of archaeology and mass tourism had cleaned, restored and reduced everything to the status of a museum exhibit or (in the case of the temple below) a shopping opportunity. There's more of Pascal Sébah's work at Wikimedia Commons.

Kôm Ombo (Sud Est) (The ruins of the Temple of Sobek and Haroeris at Ombos, Egypt, between 1860 and 1886).

Colosses de Memnon à Thèbes (between 1860 and 1890).

Previously on { feuilleton }

• Alhambra cyanotypes

• Constantinople, 1900

• Edinburgh, 1929

• Old Bunker Hill

• Inondations 1910

• Berenice Abbott

• Eugene de Salignac

• Luther Gerlach's Los Angeles

• The temples of Angkor

• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future

• Edward Steichen

• Karel Plicka's views of Prague

• Atget's Paris

• Downtown LA by Ansel Adams