Temple de Dandour en Nubie 1860s

Wilhelm Hammerschmidt made this albumen silver print of the Temple of Dendur in Nubia. This image tells us a great deal about the public role of art, and the politics of imagery, in the mid-nineteenth century. Hammerschmidt was part of a wave of European artists who traveled to Egypt in the wake of Napoleon’s military campaign there, and the subsequent growth of Egyptology as a scholarly discipline. Photography was, at this time, a relatively new medium, and it quickly became an important tool for documenting and studying ancient sites like Dendur. Consider the social conditions that shaped artistic production at this time. European powers were expanding their colonial reach, and images like this one played a role in shaping public perceptions of colonized lands, often reinforcing existing power dynamics. The Temple of Dendur itself, of course, has its own fascinating institutional history: it was gifted to the United States by Egypt in 1965 and now stands in the Metropolitan Museum. Art historians consult a wide range of resources, including photographs like this one, to better understand the complex social and institutional contexts in which art is made and understood.