Autopsy of the First Crocodile Onboard, Upper Egypt

1852

Not on view

This is perhaps the world’s first traveler snapshot, made on the deck of a traditional Nile vessel almost forty years before hand-held cameras, shutters, and fast film made the genre a possibility. In 1852, whether for business or simply on a young man’s grand tour, Benecke traveled throughout Egypt and the Mediterranean with a camera and a surprisingly humane spirit. The photographers who traveled there shortly before and after him, including Maxime Du Camp, Félix Teynard, and J. B. Greene, focused almost exclusively on the ancient monuments and landscape. Benecke, instead, documented the contemporary world with such keen sensitivity that his photographs, beyond their ethnographic value, present intimate and unaffected portraits of the region’s inhabitants.

Artwork Details

Title: Autopsy of the First Crocodile Onboard, Upper Egypt
Artist: Ernest Benecke (German (born England), 1817–1894)
Date: 1852
Medium: Salted paper print from paper negative
Dimensions: Image: 17.5 x 21.3 cm (6 7/8 x 8 3/8 in.)
Mount: 31.5 x 45.1 cm (12 3/8 x 17 3/4 in.)
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Gilman Collection, Purchase, William Talbott Hillman Foundation Gift, 2005
Object Number: 2005.100.262
Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

By Ernest Benecke

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Abu Nabut and Negro Slaves in Cairo, Ernest Benecke French, Salted paper print from paper negative — Abu Nabut and Negro Slaves in Cairo
Ernest Benecke
April 22, 1852

Wassileh and Lhedeh, Ghawagea, Ernest Benecke French, Salted paper print from paper negative — Wassileh and Lhedeh, Ghawagea
Ernest Benecke
1852

[Children from the Village of Kalabshah, Nubia], Ernest Benecke French, Salted paper print from paper negative — [Children from the Village of Kalabshah, Nubia]
Ernest Benecke
1852

Egyptian Musicians (Rabawí) and Almée, Ernest Benecke French, Salted paper print from paper negative — Egyptian Musicians (Rabawí) and Almée
Ernest Benecke
February 20, 1852

Mt. Liban. Tronc d'un des Cèdres de Salomon, Ernest Benecke French, Salted paper print (Blanquart-Évrard process) from paper negative — Mt. Liban. Tronc d'un des Cèdres de Salomon
Ernest Benecke
Imprimerie photographique de Blanquart-Évrard, à Lille
1850–53

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