Beschreibung:

PHOTOGRAPHY] KOZLOWSKI, J.[USTIN]. Canal maritime de Suez. Photographies d'après nature. S.l. [but Port Saïd according to the B.N.]: s.n., [1869]. Modern cloth retaining original lettered publisher's cloth mounted on the upper cover. 12 x 17 inches (30.5 x 42.5 cm); with 32 mounted albumen prints (two forming a panorama of the Canal), each image approximately 7 3/4 x 10 7/8 inches (i.e. 192 x 275 mm or the reverse), with a leaf of descriptive letterpress at end. Rebound retaining a portion of the upper cover as noted, occasional minor soiling especially to the margins of the portrait of Lesseps which also bears an inked shelf number in the margin. With the bookplate of the Explorers Club (gift of Phanor J. Eder). A rare document of the construction of the Suez Canal. The photographs are signed (and occasionally dated or captioned) in the negative, with generally strong tones (slight adhesive fading at edges). The work documents the construction from its earliest phases to the opening ceremonies on the 18th of November, 1869. Nissan N. Perez in Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East 1839-1885, mentions of Kozlowski that "It is possible that he was hired by the engineer Stanislaw Janicki, who supervised the digging between Port Said and Ismailia, for which he hired some eighty Polish engineers." Otherwise, little is known of him, except that he was a Polish emigree living in La Rochelle between 1837 and 1847. No matter what the circumstances of the production of the images were, they are extremely striking; apparently, some were used as early as 1867 in Le Monde in articles on the construction of the canal. C The Explorers Club Collection