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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Variations on light and shadow
By Fayza HassanDaguerrotypists found ideal subjects in the ruins of Ancient Egypt. The monuments were stunning, of course; perhaps as importantly, they could be counted on not to move and blur the picture. The shiny image the earliest photographers produced on metal plates thus included an immense number of sharp details. The process invented by the Frenchman Louis Daguerre was slow, however, and presented the grave disadvantage of yielding a single image, which could be reproduced only indirectly, by engraving. Jacques Ittier, Pierre Joly de Lotbinière, Horace Vernet and Hector Horeau were the first daguerrotypists to work in Egypt.
According to the same principle, Langtvet has built another, smaller wooden camera, with which he has been experimenting for his own pleasure, coming up with interesting narrow strip-like photographs which uncannily resemble those of bygone days.
While his exhibition of work on Mameluke Cairo, currently showing at AUC's Sony Gallery, has been extended for an extra month to accommodate the many visitors who wish to view it, Langtvet is rather disappointed by the fact that he has had problems taking pictures of the Cairo he has come to know and love. Egyptians, he says, have not appreciated the integrity of the scenes he was shooting. They do not like seeing their country as it really is, he complains; they would prefer it to look like the Marriott Hotel. The prejudices have not disappeared after a century of photography, he says: "I am told that at the time when the Lehnert and Landrock collection was being sold in Egypt, a photograph of a building containing a street which [...] did not have a curbstone could be rejected by the sensor."
Almost simultaneously with Daguerre, an Englishman, William Talbot, invented an alternative process, the calotype or talbotype which produced a paper negative from which any number of equally good positive images could be developed. By 1862, the wet collodion process with glass plates replaced the calotype, although the latter, with its paper negatives, remained more popular with travellers, who did not always wish to transport fragile and weighty material. The calotype's main disadvantage was the impossibility of changing the size of the print: to obtain large or small prints, one had to choose a large or small camera. The first photographer to obtain remarkable results with this process was Robert Murray, working in 1852. His photos were judged to be as good as, and sometimes even superior to, the ones produced with newer techniques. The process was fairly simple: a sensitive emulsion was used to impregnate the paper, becoming embedded in its fibres. The prints were made by laying the paper with the negative emulsion on another one impregnated with a positive emulsion, thus producing an image that was soft and attractive. More precision was obtained by waxing the negative either before or after exposure.
Clock wise from top: Langtvet's vision of the area near the twin domes of Salar and Sanjar, on Sabila Street; hi-tech cameras afford higher speed--and an opportunity for the photographer to remain unobtrusive--in Randa Shaath's shot of Wikalat Al-Ghur; Robert Murray's 1852 view of the Mosque of Abul-Haggag (built over the Temple of Luxor), taken with a camera very similar to the one Langtvet uses today, emphasises fine architectural details; Langtvet's home-made camera yields hazy outlines in strips imagery this is the rest of the caption
Professionals generally claim that the images still lacked the sharpness of details that we have come to expect today from advanced equipment. Canadian photographer Christian Langtvet, however, who has been working in Egypt for the past two years, begs to differ: "Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographers produced some of the most memorable and technically refined photographs ever made, without having to resort to the technicalities of modern equipment. The fallacy we live with today is that advanced equipment makes a photographer more able to 'grasp' -- a metaphor for empathy -- his or her subject," he writes in the catalogue accompanying his exhibition. Langtvet, currently working in cooperation with the Lehnert and Landrock bookshop, is reproducing the more famous prints made by the two photographers who founded it, using a process comparable to that used in the early 1920s, when the originals were taken. He uses the simple single-element lens of a wooden 1898 Kodak camera with a pivoting lens he found at a flea market in Canada. The prints are made by producing 8x14 inch paper negatives from the original negatives, then contact printing them to arrive at the finished product.
According to him, Egyptians consider that the scars on ancient monuments or the signs of ordinary life going on around them are blemishes that should not be recorded; Langtvet, on the other hand, believes that they are of the essence if one is serious about documenting an era. One of the remarkable things about Egypt is the vitality of its monuments: people are still using old buildings and, regardless of the deterioration that befalls them in consequence, they are keeping them alive. Langtvet is not particularly enthusiastic about open-air museums. No one needs more dead places, he claims: "I [still] hope that my work will not be interpreted as focus[ing] on such issues as preservation or poverty, but [as] a reflection of some of the tranquil delight and vitality that I, as a Westerner, feel in these parts of Cairo."
