La Syrie. Costumes, Voyages, Paysages (Galerie Universelle des Peuples I: Syrie) [WITH HAND-COLORED PORTRAITS]

Paris: Librarie du Petit Journal, 1866. First edition. 1/60. Quarto (27.3 by 23 cm). [8], 68 pp; 19 hand-colored albumen prints (approx. 10.5 by 8 cm; 1 mounted at main title, 18 mounted on unnumbered leaves of heavy card stock with serpentines). Main title, secondary series title dated 1865 (each in red and black); 2 half-titles. Text in French. Publisher's purple pebbled cloth with gilt title at front cover (lightly rubbed at extremities); all edges gilt. Faint foxing throughout; prints nearly fine, with bright colors. Complete with all 18 prints (and one additional) noted in the publisher's list.

First edition of this early series of hand-colored (truncated) ethnographic portraits, with accompanying historical precis and descriptive text, this being copy no. 59 (of 60), hand-numbered at the limitation page. As noted in their prospectus, Ludovico Wolfgang Hart (ca. 1836-1919) and Charles Lallelmand (b. 1846) set out to "reproduce through photography the national costumes that are disappearing rapidly before the advance of civilisation, to preserve for people the flavor, and for artists the memory of what once was beautiful and picturesque." Hart was a former sapper in the Royal Engineers, Lallemand an Alsacian draughtsman and journalist. Their partnership was headquartered in Lallemand's native Strasbourg; Armand Vorroquier, successor to Furne fils and Tournier, was their agent in Pairs. Lallemand and Hart's ambitious project would be dubbed the Galerie Universelle des Peuples. The Eastern wing of the photographic series encompassed Cairo, Beirut, and Damascus; while the European wing included Germany, Alsace, Savoie, Baden, and Switzerland. The photographs were published in several formats, including steroscopic views. Beginning in 1865, subscribers were promised one hundred photographs and 150 pages of text in the first year, at the cost of 120 francs for regular prints and 150 francs for the hand-colored series. "Strangely, Hart's name was not mentioned in most of the publications; usually Lallemand was identified as the author of the photographs. Even the little book of nineteen hand-colored photographs of Syrian costumes and landscapes, of which only sixty copies were printed, was published under Lallemand's name" (Perez).

The Near Eastern photographs, in particular, were unusual for such an early date, most of the studies being taken outdoors, with sitters who appear to be local people, rather than hired models. "Hart's images lack the romanticism often present in more commerical work. Their purpose was more a documentation of costume, and, to a lesser extent, ethnographic type... He praises many groups of people he encountered on his travels, especially the Maronite and Druse communities" (Jacobson). Notably, ten of the prints depict two or more subjects, including a group of four Arab musicians; four Kurdish peasants; a pair of lemonade merchants in Beirut; two Jewish women in Damascus; Emir Melhem and his young son; three Christian women of Damascus; a pair of Greek Melkite deacons. The hand-coloring is done with great care, producing bright, bold, realistic effects. Ludovico Hart had earlier published a manual entitled Photography Simplified: A Practical Treatise on the Collodion and Albumen Processes (Southampton: Marshall and Co., 1857). Receiving instruction in photography from Charles Thurston Thompson, he worked in the Ordinance Map Office in Southampton where he used photography as a tool for making documents and maps. We learn from the various articles he submitted to the British Journal of Photography that Hart used a triplet lens of British manufacture to capture his outdoor portraits, and that a combination of high quality training and great care in the packing of chemical preparations and plates "insured a high degree of success in the final results" (Jacobson).

A rare work, OCLC (Jan 2025) locates six surviving copies, including two in the United States (NYPL; Getty Research Institute)

Annotations: limitation page signed G. Richard. References: K. Jacobson, Odalisques and Arabesques: Orientalist Photography 1839-1925, pp. 40; 242-3; N. Perez, Focus East, Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885, pp. 174-176; illus. no. 186: Melkite Priest. (Inventory #: 54540)