Lot Essay
Born into a family of painters, Salzmann became involved with photography and archaeology and was in Palestine as early as 1850-51. In 1854 he was commissioned by the Ministry of Public Instruction to visit Egypt, Syria and Palestine and to photograph the monuments left by the knights of the order of Saint John in Jerusalem and Rhodes. When Salzmann returned to Paris in the middle of that year, he brought back more than 200 paper negatives showing antique architectural fragments from the Romenesque, Byzantine, Latin, Arab and Turkish periods of the history of Jerusalem. The negatives were then printed by Blanquart-Evrard and published in 1856 by Gide and Baudry as Jerusalem, vues et monuments de la ville sainte de l'poque judaque au present with 174 plates. An earlier edition, titled Jerusalem, poques judaque, romaine, chrtienne, arabe, explorations photographiques and published in 1854 by Blanquart-Evrard in Lille comprised three volumes with 178 plates.