Le Sphinx, Egypt Moyenne

This photograph by Maxime du Camp is part of an extraordinary album given to the George Eastman House by G. C. Monkhouse of Kodak Ltd., England. Carefully bound in a handsome leather album containing 176 original photographs in excellent preservation taken by leading photographers of the time. Many of the photographs bear dates between 1856 and 1859; it is believed that the album was bound shortly after the latter year. An index of photographers represented is a roster of the most famous names in the early history of the art. There are prints by Henry Fox Talbot and Frederick Scott Archer, inventors of the calotype and collodion processes respectively. Some of the finest work produced by David Octayius Hill and Robert Adamson is represented by superb calotypes. From the expeditionary photographs of Egypt taken by Maxime Du Camp on his trip with the French writer Gustave Flaubert in 1849-50, there are six prints. The early founders of the pictorial movement, O. G. Rejlander and H. P. Robinson, contributed one print apiece. Roger Fenton, of Crimean War fame, and George Washington Wilson, the Scottish landscapist are present, as well as a host of photographers whose names have not yet become familiar to us. The collection was formed by Thomas Brumby Johnston, great-giandfather of the donor, who was Honorary Secretary of the Photographic Society of Scotland. As a cross section of British and French photography of the early part of the last century, the Johnston album is remarkable.