Albumen Print. Medinet Habou. Gabriel Lekegian. Nineteenth Century

Large albumen print showing a group of children posing in front of an entrance to the temple of  Medinet-Habou, the largest of all Egyptian funerary temples.
This photograph is the work of Gabriel Lekegian.
G. Lekegian is representative of the second generation of commercial photographers established in Egypt. Antonio Beato preceded him – in this district of Azbakiyya that will be occupied by the Armenian studio –, Hippolyte Béchard, the Bonfils, Pascal Sebah, and still others, more or less well documented. Lekegian probably settled as a photographer in Cairo between 1887 and 1892. The one who was a painter in Constantinople will sign most of his negatives "Photo[ography] Art[istic] G. Lekegian & Co", as shown in the pictures offered here .
His flourishing production is divided between views of architecture and Egyptian types. If it denotes, in most cases, a classical sense of composition, we also read there a desire for form in the construction of the plans, the attention paid to light, and it sometimes conceals a conception of lines of sight bold. H_27.5cm W_21cm.
Albumen print, circa 1890-1900, from a silver gelatin bromide glass negative, titled and signed in the negative.
Good state of preservation, yellowing of the paper in the margin.