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A photograph could travel farther than the person who made it. In the nineteenth century, that mattered enormously.

When European travelers entered the Middle East and North Africa with cameras, the resulting photographs did more than record what they encountered. They became portable versions of distant places—objects that could circulate among people who had never been there. The Getty Research Institute’s research into nineteenth-century photography describes the region as central to the development of photography while also examining how the medium helped construct Europe’s Orientalist vision of the “Orient.”

The scale of that visual record is remarkable. The Getty’s Ken and Jenny Jacobson Orientalist Photography Collection contains approximately 4,500 images of the Middle East and North Africa, mostly dating from 1843 to 1920. More than 164 photographers and studios are represented. The photographs include architecture and landscapes, but roughly a third concerns customs, costumes, vendors, bazaars and working-class life.

The camera therefore did something more complicated than simply showing a place.

A photograph of a bazaar could become an image of “the East.” A carefully selected view of an ancient monument could become an image of an entire country. A person photographed in a particular setting could become, for distant viewers, a representative of a culture rather than an individual.

The photographs were not necessarily fraudulent. “332 words to go. A donation keeps you reading and supports our independence. Thank you!”

By Edge of Humanity Magazine