French interest in Egyptian and Northern African culture began with Napoleon Bonaparte’s unsuccessful military campaign in Egypt in 1798–99. Along with military personnel, Napoleon brought a legion of artists and scientists to document exhaustively the culture and geography of Egypt. While the campaign itself was a disaster, with the French surrendering to the British in 1799, the resulting massive survey Description de l’Égypte was published in twenty-three volumes from 1808 to 1823. These volumes became the standard reference work for Egyptologists for the following fifty years, and provided the context for the impressive photographic work of Maxime Du Camp, Felix Teynard, John Beasley Greene, and Auguste Salzmann.
Their photographs are now considered as part of Orientalism, a theoretical concept that corresponds to how Europeans represented and interpreted Near and Middle Eastern cultures as a construction of their own ideology. The Orient became a kind sensual and romantic fantasy that developed alongside and supported European colonialism.
All of the photographers mentioned used the waxed paper negative process developed by Gustave Le Gray, and conducted extensive personal tours of photographic exploration. Du Camp and Teynard concentrated upon ancient Egyptian architecture, while Salzmann documented Judaic architecture in Jerusalem, and Greene archaeological sites in Egypt and Algeria. All found in the mute testimony of the immense stone ruins the basis of their engagement with these ancient cultures. Each compiled their work into albums or limited edition publications, suited to the specialized scholar, the wealthy antiquarian, and the library.