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ARCHITECTURE WITH LANDSCAPE "Si les monuments, et c'est là le plus noble privilège de l'architecture, reflètent les coutumes, les moeurs, les usages, la civilisation enfin du peuple qui les éleva." Girault de Prangey Essai sur l'Architecture des Arabes et des Mores en Espagne, en Sicile et en Barbarie, Paris A. Hauser 1841, page 189. In some of these daguerreotypes architecture is dominated by landscape and even appears to be part of it, while in others the natural world is subordinate to the built environment. Girault de Prangey's images of architecture with landscape often conform to the accepted notion of the general view or "establishing shot "- a photograph which acts as an introduction to the subject but which can also, if necessary, stand alone as the only view which is required to simply describe that subject. At other times he uses the two elements together to produce a picturesque effect or to emphasise similarities or contrasts between the natural and that built or destroyed by man. Frequently, the chosen subjects represent man's earliest and most significant architectural achievements, but he is also prepared to point his lens away from historically significant works towards the more mundane. On occasion he eschews traditional composition to produce images that look least like the paintings and drawings of his predecessors and point instead towards the spare modernism of the documentary photographer.

JOSEPH-PHILIBERT GIRAULT DE PRANGEY

234. Philé T.[emple] découvert et P.[almiers] datiers.

Details

JOSEPH-PHILIBERT GIRAULT DE PRANGEY
234. Philé T.[emple] découvert et P.[almiers] datiers.
Daguerreotype. n.d.[1843-44] Titled and numbered in ink on label on verso.
3¼ x 3¾in. (8.1 x 9.4cm.)

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Lot Essay

The small Kiosk of Trajan (also known as the Hypaethral Temple or Pharoah's Bed) was of special importance for many visitors to the island of Philae on the Nile. Before the building of the Aswan Dam, the temples on the island were flooded annually between December and April and had to be visited by boat during this period. The Kiosk of Trajan acted as a formal entrance through which travellers would sail to gain entry into the court of the great Temple of Isis. Its significance and its location, perched on the rocks with palm trees nearby, made it a popular subject for artists, and other photographers working in the later 19th century.
This is one of a few variant studies in the same size from the photographer's archive. One of these was sold in Christie's auction of May 2003 (lot 78). In this particular view his title stresses the presence of the date palms as well as of the little temple.

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