Set of 18 Albumen Photographs in Original Album. Egypt, 1899

Stunning set of eighteen albumen photographic prints stored in the original album and in good condition. The photos show different Egyptian scenes, characters, landscapes and monuments that reflect the most popular places of the country as they were more than one century ago. Among the images we can see the Sphinx in Gizeh in front of the Pyramid of Cheops, street scenes in Cairo, traditionally dressed people and landscapes where river Nile is the main character. The photographs are stored in an album from the time with the inscription RICORDO DEGITTO (Souvenir from Egypt) printed on the cover in silvery lettering. Inside the cover we can see a handwritten dedicatory in Spanish, signed in Alexandria in January, 1899. The text was written by the person who bought the album who gives it to a friend as a present. As stated before, the copies stored in the album are printed on albumen paper; it was a photographic print technique invented by Blanquart Evrard in 1850 and that became the dominant method in the second half of the 19th century. The photographs that we can see in these images bear their description in French, written in the negative. Together with these descriptions we can also read the word Zangaki, present in every copy. It refers to the Zangaki brothers, two popular Greek photographers that worked in Egypt between 1870 and 1890, producing prints for the tourist trade. This beautiful album, with images of the classic historical landmarks of the country and street scenes full of life, is a good sample of the great work that these two artists performed. Beautiful and charming, this set of nostalgic images is a wonderful testimony of the first times of commercial photography. Measurements (Album): Width: 12.5 in/32 cm. Height: 14.9 in/38 cm.