Megan Westervelt
Staff Writer
War, politics, religious movements and natural disasters — all key players in the formation of human history. Now, Kathleen Stewart Howe has just added one more chief element to the list, one that most people would never consider as being pivotal in history: photography. Howe, the Sarah Rempel & Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Museum of Art and professor of art history at Pomona College, has found that photography played a significant role in shaping archeology, especially Egyptology, from its very beginnings.
In her March 30 lecture entitled, “Egypt Recovered: Early Photographic Surveys and the Development of Egyptology,” Howe exposed photography’s dramatic impact on Egyptology. Since its introduction to the public in 1839, photography has been used as a record-keeper for dozens of archeological expeditions to Egypt. During her informative oration at the Getty Villa, Howe enlightened the audience about three of the most important photographers and their expeditions: Maxime Du Camp, Felix Teynard, and John Beasley Greene.
According to Howe, Du Camp was the first photographer who wanted to “collect impressions of the orient,” which he did through a series of general views and close-up views of hieroglyphic tablets of monuments that he took during his Egyptian expedition. He used daguerreotypes to preserve the images and to create the first photographic travel book.
A few years after Du Camp’s expedition, Teynard traveled to Egypt in hopes of being able to convey a sense of experience through his photographs by actually spending time around the ancient sites. He produced a photographic atlas of Egypt, which included the first photographs of vandalized and defaced monuments.
Greene traveled to Egypt in the 1850s, after Du Camp and Teynard, but he went there as an excavator. He traveled to Egypt and found more to excavate than he had ever imagined existed. He only took photographs in order to keep a record of the excavations in which he participated, such as that of the Sphinx. It was Greene who kept the first systematic documentation of any excavation in history.
Howe said that these photographers have left a legacy that enables people today to understand the origins of both photography and Egyptology. “Different people coming from different backgrounds within the same cultural moment, photographing the same sites, reveal the complexity of the 19th century approach to ancient Egypt and the way an ancient culture was mined for contemporary reasons,” Howe said.
Howe’s lecture not only heightened the audience’s interest in the fields of photography and Egyptology, but it also increased the audience’s awareness of the Getty Villa’s related exhibit, “Antiquity and Photography: Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites.”
“Our programming will always be based on or support one of the exhibitions or the permanent collection,” said Tracy Gilbert, senior communications specialist at the Getty Villa.
The exhibit, which will run until May 1, features 19th century photographs by Du Camp, Teynard, Greene, and others, such as Joseph Philibert, a pioneer Daguerreotypist. These photographs transport the viewer back to ancient Greece and Egypt. They provide a glimpse into the life of an archeologist working on some of the oldest monuments and sites around the Mediterranean, all through the lens of a camera.
“From the earliest days of photography, its practitioners traveled to the ancient sites of the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy,” the Getty Villa communications department wrote in the description of the exhibit, “Long before they were identified as modern political entities, the regions around the Mediterranean Sea inspired fascination and influence far beyond their shores.” In fact, that fascination and influence has traveled much farther beyond those Mediterranean shores, reaching all the way to the shores of California, to Malibu’s shores. The Getty Villa is now sharing this Mediterranean fascination and influence with the public through its display of these photographs, which really are antiquities in themselves.
“I think the exhibition in its form — the range and quality of objects, the design and installation, the scholarly essays in the catalogue — are an example what the Getty, both Museum and Getty Research Institute, achieve when they work together,” said Howe. “I applaud the concept of placing an exhibition at the Villa that addresses the important place the idea of the antique had in the nineteenth century.”
“Antiquities don’t exist in a vacuum. Every age collects them and studies them for their own reasons,” Howe continued. “Placing a survey of 19th century images at the Villa as it reopens suggests to viewers that they think about how our own age values and uses the antique.”
What makes this exhibit and lecture even more impressive is the fact that the Getty Villa reopened with this exhibit on Jan. 28, 2006 after almost nine years of being closed for renovation.
“Following a major renovation, this cultural landmark returns with a new mission as an educational center and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria,” the Getty Villa communications department stated in a press release on Jan. 20. The communications department also said that the Getty Villa’s new goal, which coincides with the goal of J. Paul Getty himself, is to serve a varied audience through the permanent collection of more than 44,000 antiquities, changing exhibits, conservation, scholarship, research, and public programs.
“Businessman and philanthropies J. Paul Getty viewed art as an enlightening influence and strongly believed in making it available to the public for education and enjoyment,” the communications department stated in the press release.
Getty’s vision of uniting ancient art with today’s visitors has clearly been adopted by all those working for the J. Paul Getty Trust today. “[The Getty Villa] will be an important gateway connecting today’s visitors to the ancient world,” said Barry Munitz, president and chief executive officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust.
One of the more specific ambitions of the Getty Villa was to encourage the public to “engage in the conservation of antiquities and train young conservators to care for artifacts and sites around the world,” according to the communications department. That is exactly what Howe’s lecture accomplished. It promoted the awareness of treating fragile ancient art carefully, perhaps only taking photos of the antiquities instead of touching or disturbing them. Howe said that photography is the safest possible method of attaining and retaining historical information and documentation.
Since she is so supportive of photography’s crucial role in Egyptology, Howe is taking notice of new photographic technology that may revolutionize modern archeology even more. “I’m interested in the way that new imaging systems, GSI and remote sensing, can reveal past layers in the contemporary landscape, and how contemporary archeologists might respond to those technologies and ways of seeing,” she said.
Howe so highly supports photography because photographs are all she knows of Egypt. Though she has spent much of her life building an in-depth study of ancient Egypt, Howe has yet to visit the country full of archeological wonders. She said that she would prefer to visit the Egypt she’s discovered through photographs rather than modern-day Egypt. “I would really love to go to the Egypt of 1850 — before Philae had been inundated, when you could camp in a tomb, feed your fire with mummy bits — well maybe not that, so irresponsible,” she said.
07-14-2006
