This is a beautiful picture with the signature of Bonfils in the lower right corner of the photo and with the number 117 on it.
Bonfils is a French photographer that started his job as photographer having as teacher a nephew of Niepce.
He established in Beirut in 1867, so this picture, because of the style and material, belongs to his first years.
He had one of the most important photographic studios of the Middle East. He made portrait studio photos as well as pictures of monuments and places when he travelled to famous cities.
One of his master pieces is a book published by Ducher in 1872 with 100 vintage images of the Middle East.
His son and his grand-daughter continued working in his father's studio after his dead and until 1938.
Félix Bonfils (1831–1885), a French printer turned photographer,
moved to Beruit in 1867 and opened a photographic studio. He
photographed the cities and sites of the eastern Mediterranean including
Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Greece, which he visited in
1868–1870 and again in the mid–1870s. His photographs of Greece were
included in the albums Architecture Antique: égypte, Grèce, Asie Mineure. Album de photographies (1872) and Souvenirs dOrient
(1878). Bonfils's wife Lydie, son Adrien, and daughter Félicie were all
involved in the family business, which also employed numerous assistant
photographers. Their firm became a very successful and prolific
purveyor of commercial travel views, with distrubutors in Alexandria,
Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, Port Said, Paris, and Basel. Adrien took
over direction of photography expeditions in 1878, and ran the firm
after his father's death until the late 1890s. Lydie then managed the
firm, eventually selling it around 1909 to Abraham Guiragossian, who
continued using the Bonfils name into the 1930s.
Exhibition Archive Photographic Recollections: Ancient and Islamic
Monuments in the Near East 1850-1880
Some of the photographers featured, such as James Robertson, Felix Bonfils and
Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, settled and established studios in Istanbul, Beirut or
Cairo, to deal directly with the increasing numbers of travellers to the area.
Other photographers, like Francis Frith, Frank Mason Good, Giacomo Brogi and
Francis Bedford, undertook extensive and laborious expeditions to acquire their
negatives, which they sold to the home market from catalogues, or, in the case
of the Italian Brogi and the English Bedford, published in magnificent albums
.......L'atelier
Bonfils, fondé à Beyrouth en 1867, est l'archétype
de l'atelier familial prospère pendant des décennies (il
fut vendu en 1918 à Abraham Guiragossian, associé depuis
1909). Félix, avec sa femme, Lydie, et leurs enfants, Adrien et
Félicie, s'établit définitivement à Beyrouth
en 1867 pour y pratiquer la photographie.....
......Ces vues sont vendues une par une au choix
mais aussi rassemblées sous forme d'albums. Bonfils présente
d'abord en 1872 son Architecture antique, publiée par Ducher
à Paris. Mais il faut signaler tout particulièrement une
série de cinq volumes intitulés Souvenirs d'Orient ..
....Certaines photographies sont l'œuvre du fils
et d'autres d'assistants anonymes. Si l'ensemble du catalogue est intéressant,
en particulier pour la Palestine et la Syrie, abondamment représentées
alors que la production commerciale est en général plus
fournie pour l'Égypte et la Turquie, la multiplicité des
auteurs explique de sensibles fluctuations de qualité. ...........
THE LIGHT
OF ANCIENT ATHENS: A Photographic
Journey by Félix Bonfils, 1868–1875
..Viewed objectively,
the Bonfils photographs provide valuable information about the condition
of the ancient monuments and the urban landscape of Athens around 1870.
In addition, they illustrate the most important stations on a traveler’s
itinerary and the preferred points of view from which the monuments and
city were to be seen. Taken together, the photographs construct an idealized
city, more ancient than modern....
Fotografía que representa la Plaza de Antonio Lopez dedicada al financiero del mismo nombre.
