Mosquée de Sultan Kansou-El-Gouri
Maxime Du Camp
French, 1822–1894
1837-1852
An early calotype by Maxime Du Camp that records the twin-domed Mosque of Sultan Kansou‑El‑Gouri in Cairo, made to document and share the monumental architecture he encountered on his travels.
The image’s soft, grainy blacks and silvery grays reduce the mosque to bold masses and patterned domes, so the building’s carved surfaces and rounded forms read as textured silhouettes against a pale sky.
One of the 19th-century travel photographs that helped establish photography as a tool for architectural documentation and for bringing distant monuments into European visual awareness.
Medium
Calotype, printed 1852
Dimensions
6 5/16 × 8 7/16" (16.0 × 21.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Warner Communications, Inc.
Accession
845.1978
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
