Egypt by Zangaki, Photog. Artistique G. Lékégian & Co., Abdullah Frères, Antonio Beato and others Photography

Egypt by Zangaki, Photog. Artistique G. Lékégian & Co., Abdullah Frères, Antonio Beato and others

Foto's in het album zijn vervaar digd door: Zangaki, Photog. Artistique G. Lékégian & Co., Abdullah Frères, Antonio Beato, e.a. Het album bevat een papieren stempel op p. 2: "F.W. Rinck, Hof- en Nederlandsche Albumfabrikant, Den Haag"

The Zangaki Brothers (active 1870s-1890s) were two Greek photographers who specialized in historic or ancient Egyptian scenes, producing prints for the tourist trade. They occasionally worked with the Port Said photographer, Hippolyte Arnoux. Little is known about the brothers, except their initials, C. and G., and that they worked out of Port Said and Cairo. Their photographs of late 19th century Egypt, are highly prized by historians and collectors for their insights into life at the time. Images included views of the pyramids (e.g. Cheops or the Sphinx) and the cities (e.g. Suez or Alexandria), as well of Egyptians going about their daily lives (e.g. a teacher and pupils, men by the Nile, or women at home).

G. Lekegian, an Armenian, moved to Cairo from Istabul. He set up a studio in Cairo (1887). Armenians dominated the early photographic industry in Egypt. Few Arabs new anything about photography. Egypt did not have a modern educatioin system and the education that did exist emphasized Islam rather than math and science. Lekegian, rapidly acquired a reputation for the quality of his work. Lekegian ususlly signed his photographs "Photographic Artistique G. Lekegian & Co". This was French based company. He won the Gold Medal at the International Photography Exhibition in Paris in 1892, and the Grand Prize at the International Exhibition in Chicago (1893). His work is an important record of Arab life in Egypt and other North African countries. Some of the best 19th century images of Egypt were produced by Lekegian. His work is found in many major photographic collections. He located his studio, near the legendary Shepheard's Hotel. As his reputsation grew, he turned the area between Qasr al-Nil Street and Opera Square into a golden triangle of Cairo photography. (http://histclo.com/photo/photo/photog/pho-lek.html, 2010-08-23).

Abdullah Frères, three Ottoman Armenian brothers Vichen (1820–1902), Hovsep (1830–1908) and Kevork Abdullah (1839–1918) who ran a profitable studio in Constantinople with other locations in Cairo and Izmir. In 1862 the three brothers were named official royal photographers to the courts of the Sultans Abdul Aziz and Abdul Hamid II, and had the right to use the royal monogram.

While official royal photographers to the Sultans they were commissioned to document the Ottoman Empire in photographs. The work appears to have been conceived by the sultan as a portrait of his empire for the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, but was not exhibited there. It dwells on the accomplishments and westernizing improvements of the regime, such as the well drilled and equipped military, the technologically advanced lifesaving and fire fighting brigades, customs bureaucracy, and life at the lavish Imperial court. A copy of the survey was presented by Sultan Abdul-Hamid to the Library of Congress in 1894. (Gift of H.I.M. the Sultan Abdul Hamid II)

They also sold various views of Egypt and the Middle East to tourists through their studios. In 1899 they sold their business and collection to Sebah and Jollier, which led ultimately to confusion of manufacture from the two studios, since later photographs from Abdullah Frères negatives are embossed with the Sebah and Jollier back stamp.

Antonio Beato was an Italian-British photographer, known for his landscape views of the architecture of Egypt and other locations in the Mediterranean region. He was the younger brother of photographer Felice Beato (1832 - 1909), with whom he sometimes worked.

Antonio Beato's origins are uncertain; he was probably born in Venetian territory and later became a naturalized British citizen. His brother was born in Venice, but the family may have moved to Corfu, which had been a Venetian possession until 1814 when it was acquired by Britain.

Thye large number of photographs signed "Felice Antonio Beato" and "Felice A. Beato", brought to the assumption that there was a photographer who somehow managed to photograph contemporarily in different countries as Egypt and Japan. Later, in 1983 Italo Zannier deducted that "Felice Antonio Beato" represented two brothers, Felice Beato and Antonio Beato, who sometimes worked together, sharing a signature. The confusion arising from the signatures continued to cause problems in identifying which of the two photographers was the creator of a given image.

Antonio often used the French version of his given name, as Antoine Beato. It is presumed that he did so because he mainly worked in Egypt, which had a large French-speaking population.

Antonio Beato went to Cairo in 1860 where he spent two years before moving to Luxor where he opened a photographic studio in 1862 and began producing tourist images of the people and architectural sites of the area. 

In 1864, at a time when his brother Felice was living and photographing in Japan, Antonio photographed members of Ikeda Nagaoki's Japanese mission who were visiting Egypt on their way to France.

Antonio Beato died in Luxor in 1906.

See also Pioneers of Travel Photography

Views & Reviews A Photographic Survey 14th St. New York Sy Rubin Larry Siegel Photography

14th St. : Photographs by Sy Rubin & Larry Siegel
Sy Rubin and Larry Siegel); Paul Goldberger (Introduction)
ISBN 10: 093655410X / ISBN 13: 9780936554105
Published by Matrix, Providence, Rhode Island, 1982
96 pages; over 70 b&w photos of life on 14th St. when rents were lower and condos hadn't yet arrived. Paul Goldberger is a longtime architectural critic, notably with the New York Times. Size: Oblong 8vo.

See also

Views & Reviews New York in Photobooks from William Klein through to Bruce Golden Horacio Fernández Photography

Top Classic Photobooks about New York City according to AddAll Photography

14th St.
Street photography was well established as a genre in New York by the seminal work of William Klein and Robert Frank in the 1950s. The tradition was transformed in the 1970s through the more personal work of photographers like Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand. Perhaps the best-known example of this newer kind of personal documentary work, applied to a specific neighborhood in New York, is Bruce Davidson’s East 100th Street project, funded by an NEA grant in 1966–1968 and published in book form in 1970. From 1976 to 1981, the NEA supported more than 70 projects documenting American cities. One such project, Sy Rubin and Larry Siegel’s 14th St., demonstrates the continuing vitality of street photography into the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Sponsored by the Midtown Y and funded in part by the NEA and the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the project documented Manhattan’s longest crosstown street, which was then considered the dividing line between downtown and midtown. Running from the Con Edison plant at the East River to the meatpacking district near the Hudson, 14th Street was, and still is, home to the “Y.” Although much of the flavor of 14th Street remains today, many of the once familiar places Rubin and Siegel captured have since disappeared: May’s Department Store is now the site of a Whole Foods Market, and Lüchow’s restaurant, the Palladium, and Julian’s Billiards have been replaced by buildings owned by New York University, which now has a dominant presence in the East Village. On the West Side, the meatpacking district has undergone perhaps an even more extreme transformation and is now home to high-end fashion boutiques and trendy restaurants.

The photographs in this section are gelatin silver prints by Sy Rubin (1931–2002), taken between 1979 and 1981 and donated by Rubin to the permanent collection of the Midtown Y Photography Gallery. They were included in the exhibition 14th St., on display at the Midtown Y from February 17 to March 21, 1982, and published in a book of the same title in 1982. They are presented here in the original exhibition order designated by Rubin.

Sy Rubin. “Union Square Sub-way Station.” Gelatin silver print, included in the exhibition 14th St., February 17–March 21, 1982, and published in 14th St. (Providence, R.I.: Matrix, 1982). © Andrew M. Rubin; reproduced courtesy of Andrew M. Rubin, Jennifer Rothschild, and Judith Rubin.

Sy Rubin. “Corner of Third Avenue.” Gelatin silver print, included in the exhibition 14th St., February 17–March 21, 1982, and published in 14th St. (Providence, R.I.: Matrix, 1982). © Andrew M. Rubin; reproduced courtesy of Andrew M. Rubin, Jennifer Rothschild, and Judith Rubin.

Sy Rubin. “Between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas.” Gelatin silver print, included in the exhibition 14th St., February 17 – March 21, 1982, and published in 14th St.(Providence, R.I.: Matrix, 1982).  © Andrew M. Rubin; reproduced courtesy of Andrew M. Rubin, Jennifer Rothschild and Judith Rubin.

Sy Rubin. “14th Street Subway Station.” Gelatin silver print, included in the exhibition 14th St., February 17–March 21, 1982, and published in 14th St. (Providence, R.I.: Matrix, 1982). © Andrew M. Rubin; reproduced courtesy of Andrew M. Rubin, Jennifer Rothschild, and Judith Rubin.

Views & Reviews Exhibitionism is a Ceaseless Pleasure Beach Charles H. Traub Street Photography

Charles H. Traub: Beach Photographs at Alibi Fine Art, Chicago
by Jason Foumberg

While Chicago's streets offer photographers a cold, hard portrait of the city's citizens, the city beaches deliver its vivid inverse. Each year Chicagoans emerge from an extended winter, pale and restless, and migrate east, to Lake Michigan. The quick burst of summer is like mating season, inviting only the bravest sociologist to observe the carnal, freeform play. Charles H. Traub clearly gained the confidence of the revelers-despite the vignette borders of his pictures, which evoke a peephole voyeur-who preened, paraded, and showed off their goods, close up, for his camera. Traub's vintage, black-and-white Beach series (on view through August 25) is over 36 years old, but exhibitionism is a ceaseless pleasure; the photographs look as fresh as a sunburn.

Traub certainly had a taste for the grotesque. He focused on a groin's five-o'clock stubble, muscles contorted in mid-dive, aggressive kiss scenes, and unabashed open-air vanity. His shadow is often cast creepily over his sitter. Although Traub studied with Aaron Siskind at the Illinois Institute of Design, his base animals are the antithesis of Siskind's sublime divers. A decade after Traub's Beach series, Doug Ischar took to the same water and photographed a newly emergent homosocial beach community. While Ischar's compositions recall classical bather scene, Traub's are a full-out beach bacchanal. The same year that Traub published the Beach series, he founded what is now the Museum of Contemporary Photography, thereby institutionalizing a visual history of Chicago, the city's photography legacy, and his own.

Traub, Charles H.
American, b. 1945
During the 1970s Charles H. Traub pursued an ongoing series of street photographs in Chicago. In photographs of people on the sidewalks, Traub often shot from a low angle, or with the camera positioned at waist level. Heads or limbs are cut off by the edge of the frame and the photographs imply an incredibly close proximity to the subject, as if we were stepping into his or her personal space. These techniques are particularly pronounced in two of Traub's photographs from 1973 and 1974, in which the subject's body is framed tightly so that a shirt or jacket becomes a nearly abstract field of patterned cloth that spans most of the image.

During his years in Chicago, Traub also completed a body of work devoted to the city's beaches. His photographs of men and women on the waterfront are by turns sensual and comical, depicting people lying on the sand, swimming or sunbathing, or showing off for other beach-goers. In these scenes, as with his street photographs, Traub's vantage point is incredibly close to the people he photographs, zeroing in on woman's hip or a man's backside or sprawled legs. The vignetting in these works, a soft black border around the image, can lend the impression of looking through a peephole at something usually kept out of sight. At the same time, Traub's beach pictures are distinctive for their dynamic formal arrangements and off-kilter angles. He tilts the camera so the horizon line becomes an abrupt diagonal cutting through the image, while organizing the figures along more vertical and horizontal axes in front of it. He also staggers the beachgoers from foreground to background, creating a counterpoint between the person at the center of the image and people farther off.

A photographer and educator for over thirty years, Charles Traub began his career in Chicago. After completing a BA at the University of Illinois (1967) and an MS in photography at Illinois Institute of Technology (1971), Traub joined the faculty at Chicago's Columbia College, where he taught from 1971 to 1977. In 1976 Traub founded the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, the predecessor to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, which was established seven years later. In 1987, having relocated to New York, Traub founded the graduate MFA Program in Photography, Video, and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts, where he has taught ever since.