More than 250 of the first images in history, including photos from Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia and others, include the exhibition "The World in their Lens: The First Photograph 1842-1896", the fourth international exhibition organized by the Louvre Abu Dhabi Cultural "interactive exchange", and receives the public from the beginning of April 25, and continues until July 13 next.
The exhibition highlights the development of photography since its invention through a rare collection of first photographs taken by the lenses of travelers and sailors in the Middle East, the Americas, Africa, Asia and India. It also shows how photography, as a means of presentation, documentation, and a tool for discovering the world, cultures and people, has spread across a wide range of first images in history, captured between 1842 and 1896.
One of the most prominent images of the exhibition is the first picture of Makkah, Madinah and the surrounding holy places. It was taken by Egyptian Major General Mohamed Sadiq Bey, who trained in photography and mapping in France. He took the first picture of Medina in 1861 and returned to Hejaz in 1880 as treasurer of a convoy The Egyptian loader, and in that period took many pictures of Mecca and the circling around the Kaaba, and the holy places.
One of the striking images of the exhibition is a photograph taken by Felix Bonfils in Egypt in 1888. An Egyptian young man sits on the ground with a group of Egyptian mummies on his side. And another photograph by Ernest Benike in 1852 of a dead crocodile aboard a sailboat in the Nile. From Egypt, the exhibition also includes photographs of a number of Pharaonic archaeological sites taken by Louis de Klerk from 1858 to 1860, including a picture of the Western Columns in the inner courtyard of the ancient Philae Temple before it was moved in the 1950s with the construction of the High Dam and another to the Great Walk in Karnak Temple In the shortest, in which destroyed walls no longer exist.
The exhibition includes works by international photographers such as: Charles Guillan, captain of a French ship that participated in a diplomatic mission along the African coast between 1847 and 1848; and Désiré Charnay, an archaeologist who photographed a collection of exceptional photographs of the earliest archaeological sites in Mexico; And Ilyas, an English envoys who traveled to Madagascar, Lai Fong, a photographer and co-founder of the first Hong Kong photography studios, and Kasian Sivas, the first Indonesian photographer. The exhibition also includes photographs of Auguste Bartholdi's trips to Egypt and Nuba And Palestine for its most prominent features. This photo collection was the first and last photographic collection of Bartoldi, who later worked on the sculpture of the Statue of Liberty.
From Algeria, the exhibition includes a large collection of personal images, most notably the image of Prince Abdelkader taken by Jacques Philippe Bhutto in 1865 during the Prince's trip to Paris.
The exhibition sheds some light on the lives of American Indians through a large collection of photographs taken by a number of photographers, showing their traditional costumes and recorded along with the personal pictures names and titles of owners such as the sacred bull and the bear with high sound and long feet and thunder hopping and others.