Early Photography of the Near East. Mount Lebanon.

A short study on the early activities of photographers in Mount Lebanon with samples of their works. The photographers include Maison Bonfils, Tancred Dumas, Brogi, Frank Mason Good, Francis Bedford, George Sabounji, Ludvico Hart, Gustave Le Gray, Benecke, Blanche and Faris el-Firkh.
Fouad C. Debbas was born in Beirut in 1930 into an influential Lebanese family. In 1958, he graduated in engineering from Ecole Centrale in Paris and joined running the family business. Until his sudden death in 2001, he built the world’s largest private collection of postcards and old photographs of Lebanon and the Middle East. He believed in the importance of collecting, preserving and sharing old images to safeguard the collective memory and the history of an entire region.