Palestine, Syria & Petra 1864

6 Albumen prints, approx. 180 x 230 mm, mounted, [cards measure 275 x 360 mm],1 of Nablus, 3 of Petra, 1 of Mkaur (Jordan) and 1 of Grotte d'Astarté.

Louis Vignes was a French naval officer, who had been trained as a photographer by Charles Negre prior to his departure to Syria between 1859 and 1864. Because of his familiarity with the Middle East, Vignes was selected to accompany the archaeologist and early photography enthusiast, Duc de Luynes, on a scientific excursion in 1864 from Beirut to Palmyra and areas surrounding the Dead Sea. A selection of sixty-four of Vignes’s photographs from this trip were reproduced as photogravures by Charles Nègre for the pictorial atlas of Luynes’s Voyage d’Exploration à la Mer Morte (1875).