Photographs

K.A.C. Creswell Collection of Photographs of Islamic Architecture contains thousands of photographic prints of monumental buildings in Egypt and the Middle East produced by this pioneering scholar from the 1920s through the 1950s, as well many by nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographers. 

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Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Photographs of Egypt and the Middle East by commercial photographers like Sebah, Béchard, Bonfils, Beato, Zangaki, Lékegian, Fiorillo and Abdallah Frères represent another collection, depicting architecture, ancient monuments, and views of urban and rural life. Formats include prints, stereograph cards (such as the Underwood and Underwood Company stereoviews), albums, and rare books featuring the work of early photographers like Francis Frith.

Van-Leo, Egypt’s leading studio photographer of the mid-twentieth century, left AUC the full corpus of his work, containing portraits of Egypt's artistic, intellectual, and political elites as everyday people. Numerous portraits reveal Van-Leo’s creativity as an art photographer. 

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Hassan Fathy, Egypt’s leading 20th-century architect, assembled a large collection of images of his built works, such as New Gourna Village, as well as photographs of vernacular architecture in Egypt and throughout the Middle East and Africa, notably indigenous structures in  Nubia later lost when the region was flooded due to the Aswan High Dam. Photographs are also available in the collections of other architects, such as modernist Sayed Karim.

Cinema and Visual Art are reflected in RBSCL collections of photographs and related items. Cinema still photographs, press books and poster collections document Egyptian movie and film personalities and productions. Photographs including images of work by visual artists, such as Salah Taher, Hussein Bicar, Margo Veillon, and Nagy Shaker are also contained in RBSCL collections. 

Postcards primarily featuring views of tourist sites in Egypt are available in an extensive collection, and may also be found in various archival collections at RBSCL.

Egyptian People and Places. Nubia and its people are depicted in a number of collections besides Hassan Fathy, notably the images commissioned by the AUC Social Research Center’s 1960s Ethnographic Survey of Egyptian Nubia and the collection of artist Margo Veillon. Egyptian family photographs are located in multiple RBSCL collections besides that of Van-Leo, one covering multiple generations being the Iskander Family Collection.  Contemporary photographs in digital form document major recent events in Egypt, including images of demonstrations and protests and graffiti and street art taken after 2011 collected by the University on the Square: Documenting Egypt’s 21st Century Revolution project.

AUC’s University Archives contains images of university buildings and campus life, events, and administrators, faculty, staff, students, and visitors (many well-known), dating to the school’s founding in 1919. University Archives personnel can assist with access to these resources.