Featured below are links to photographic and postcard collections from and about the Middle East available at the AUB University Libraries as well as at other University libraries, institutes and foundations, in addition to a short bibliography of select monographs about photography in the region.
Photography and Travel: A symbiosis
“The impetus behind the great surge of interest in early photography of the Middle East has been the ever-widening search among scholars studying the region for new and novel data-bases to tap for research material, and the recent emergence of the history of photography as a distinct field of study within the discipline of art history, leading to the inevitable "re discovery" of the Middle East by photographic historians. While the first development is just catching fire, as more and more scholars go about the slow process of rediscovering photographic archives, the latter phenomenon has reached full growth […]. Much of this literature suffers from what I term "photomania," the parent disease of "calotypomania," which has recently been diagnosed by Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Photomania divests photographs of all meaning other than that of the aesthetic. The social and historical context of photographs is suppressed in favor of the all-embracing rubric of style, and the meaning of a photographic image is confined to the narrow limits of the print surface alone. Concern about content and context is abandoned, replaced by aesthetic contemplation and perfunctory gasps of wonder. The photographer is canonized as an artist, his photographs become an "œuvre," his work behind a camera, for however long or short or intermittent a time, is considered a career, and the purpose for which his photographs were originally taken and the use to which they were put is down played so a new generative principle can be supplied – an aesthetic one.” - PAUL E. CHEVEDDEN (CHEVEDDEN, PAUL E. “Making Light of Everything: Early Photography of the Middle East and Current Photomania.” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, vol. 18, no. 2, 1984, pp. 151–174. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41887989.)
Postcard albums published by Fouad Debbas available at the AUB Libraries.
The Issa Iskandar Maalouf collection is available at the Archives and Special Collections Department at the AUB Libraries.
A collection of 58 sepia toned, black and white and color postcards, mostly taken by Sarrafian Brothers, chiefly depicting general campus views and shots of specific buildings in the Syrian Protestant College (SPC), former name of the American University of Beirut, between 1900 and 1935.
This link offers a quick glimpse of the postcard-related AUB libraries catalog.
Columbia University postcard collection from Palestine.
Lebanon
Includes a collection of photographs and postcards from Lebanon in the period between ca. 1880 and ca. 1970
A collection of photos and postcards from Beirut in the early 20th century.
"19th-century 'studio' photographs of the Levant."
Includes several postcards from Lebanon from 1900-1902.
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Syria
A collection of photos and postcards from Aleppo in the early 20th century.
A collection of photos and postcards from Damascus in the early 20th century
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Palestine
"This library and teaching resource allows educators, students, scholars, and other parties interested in using the New Curriculum to incorporate Palestine posters into classroom learning activities."
A collection of photos and postcards from Jerusalem in the early 20th century.
"A photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876-1948, by Walid Khalidi."
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Middle East
"The Fez Photograph Album is a collection of black-and-white postcard proofs, which can be tentatively dated to 1920-1921."
Includes a collection of photographs from the Middle East from 1859 to 1905.
A collection of postcards from the Mediterranean.
A collection of photographs of the Middle East.
Includes the British Museum collection of postcards form the Middle East.
Nicholas V. Artamonoff collection of photographs of Turkey dating from 1930 to 1947.
"The Fouad Debbas Collection is a photographic collection comprising over 30,000 images from the Middle East – namely Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Turkey – from 1830 till the 1960s."
The New York Public Library collection of images depicting the Middle East.