View at Girgeh

Francis Frith

1857 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

During three trips to the Middle East between 1856 and 1860, Frith made hundreds of negatives that he organized geographically and then printed in several illustrated books. In the text that accompanies this view, published in his 1858 book on Egypt and Palestine, Frith explains how the mosque originally attached to the minaret had slid, along with much of the village, down the mud slopes and into the Nile. The straw huts seen under the palms were the temporary homes of dancing girls. While the entire scene is mostly devoid of the bustle described by Frith, he nevertheless "caught the very burn of the Girgeh air," as reported in 1858 by the magazine The Athenaeum.

Artist

Francis Frith

Date

1857

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1966