Photographies

Palmyra

photographer unknown

1960s
6.5 x 9.5 cm
TR 790 P36 1950z

These photographs of Palmyra, Syria, are printed as glossy silver gelatin prints and were likely taken with a hand-held camera and celluloid film. Despite this use of twentieth-century technologies, the photographs follow a tradition of travel photography dating back to at least the 1850s, when French writer Maxime Du Camp visited and photographed the sites in Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Syria. Like Du Camp’s earlier photographs, these photographs of Palmyra focus only on ancient sites, leaving out any traces of the modern world that brought travellers and cameras to these sites.