Felix Bonfils

Originally from France, Felix Bonfils moved with his family to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1867 to establish a commercial photographic studio there. The Bonfils family later opened additional studios throughout Western Asia and North Africa, primarily photographing archaeological sites and architectural views for Western European audiences. Because these images often focused on ruins rather than modern structures, many Europeans developed an incomplete view of contemporary life across these regions. This fueled attitudes of cultural superiority and a false sense that these places and their inhabitants were stuck in the past.

Photographs bearing the name Félix Bonfils may have been taken by Bonfils or any number of staff photographers from the studio he founded in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1867. The Bonfils studio created albums of views, architecture, people, and works of art for an audience of travelers who journeyed to the Holy Land and other locales around the eastern Mediterranean. Such compendiums were perfect souvenirs.

Today, Bonfils’s vast number of photographs of archaeological ruins and cities-such as this image of a street in the Toulon (or French) quarter of Cairo-are important sources of cultural and social history.