Ayoucha

1843
Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey

The wealthy numismatist and archaeologist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804−1892) undertook a long journey around the eastern Mediterranean from 1842 to 1844 after learning the daguerreotype process. The plates he brought back, which were only discovered in 1920, are the earliest known photographs of Greece, Palestine, Egypt, Syria and Turkey. While he was mainly interested in monuments, the portraits he took in Alexandria are striking in virtue of the quality of his treatment of “the Other”. His photograph of Ayoucha is probably the first ever of a veiled Muslim woman.