Teynard, Félix (1817-92), French photographer, creator of over 160 calotypes made during his 1851-2 Nile voyage. They were published, in instalments, as Égypte et Nubie (1853-8). The publication, subtitled ‘a photographic atlas complementing the great work of Napoleonic scholarship, Description de l'Egypte’, represents a systematic recapitulation of one of the monuments of descriptive Egyptology. Teynard's gift lay in his use of the calotype process to evoke the gritty surface of desert ruins rendered in masses of light and shadow. The cost of the beautifully printed volumes—over 1, 000 francs—and their publication after the novelty of Maxime Du Camp's book of Egyptian views—the first photographically illustrated travel book—undoubtedly told against the work's commercial success. Fewer than twenty copies are known to exist.
— Kathleen Howe
Bibliography
- Howe, K. S., Felix Teynard: Calotypes of Egypt. A Catalogue Raisonné (1992)
