John Beasley Greene (1832-1856)

Albumenised salt print from a waxed paper negative. Mounted on a later board.

Jammes, B. 1981 pp.305-24, two variant prints illustrated.

The print is affixed to its mount at all four corners and the centre of the upper and lower edges. The edges are irregularly cropped. There are a few light pressure marks visible in the upper part of the print (sky area). There are very very light creases across the upper left and right corners. A dot of retouching can be seen below the left edge of the mound. A single spot of foxing is visible approx. 5cm vertically below the right edge of the mound. Overall condition is very good.
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As the only American calotypist known to have travelled to Egypt, John Beasley Greene is an important figure in the history of photography. Born to American parents and based in Paris, he became a founder member of the Société Française de Photographie, and learnt some of the arcana of photography from Gustave Le Gray. Greene travelled to Egypt (as a very young man) to become the first working archaeologist to use photography in the field. His photographs were published in France by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard. He died in Egypt in 1856.

As is amply demonstrated by the present print, Greene had something of a taste for (and mastery in) resonant, almost abstract imagery. The massive structure is fully matched by the massive confidence of the photographer facing it square on. To a modern eye, Greene's sparseness is almost minimal.

Greene was among the photographers exhibited in Along the Nile: Early Photographs of Egypt, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2001.