When he arrived in Egypt in 1798, Bonaparte didn’t realize that he would revive Europe’s ancestral fascination with this former Ottoman province.
The apathy of the fellahs, the slowly flowing Nile… the appeal of the exotic made 19th-century European travelers flock to the banks of the Nile.
Pierre Loti, Joseph Michaud, Xavier Marmier, Maxime du Camp, Arthur de Gobineau, Châteaubriand, Gérard de Nerval, Gustave Flaubert and Théophile Gautier, among many others, were all fascinated by the “Orient”, as they called Egypt, as were many archeologists and photographers… as well as the earliest tourists.
Photographs and novels accompanied these adventurers, describing a fantasy country with an obsolete beauty, a magical land that was too often seen only through the lens of Antiquity, which deliberately turned towards the appeal of modern life.
A great number of travel books and photographs were published, each one unveiling in turn a range of emotions and a multitude of points of view in the face of this other-ness.
Sûra is a snapshot of the precise moment of that encounter between Europe and Egypt – with the era’s mixture of marveling and misunderstanding, fear and curiosity. It is an image of the 19th century, with its photographers and writers who allowed the full range of their contemporary travelers’ emotions to be expressed.
This is a unique way to explore 19th century literature and – thanks to over 100 photographs from a private collection – to get up close and personal with the still-fascinating Egyptian culture.