Lehnert & Landrock in Palestine

1924 - 1930

Photo Gallery

Essays on the "Lehnert & Landrock in Palestine" Gallery:

• Lehnert & Landrock: The Pilgrimage to Palestine
  by S. Abdallah Schleifer
  (catalog essay from Lehnert & Landrock in Palestine 1924-1930)
• Al-Ahram Weekly: Other Palestines
  by Amina Elbendary
  (contemplates different European images of Palestine)
  

Return to
Sony Gallery main page

Adham center home page

Between 1924 and 1930 Lehnert & Landrock made a number of trips to Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. From those trips what remains as a heritage are 250 photographic glass plates from Palestine and a few more plates from Syria and Lebanon. From the number of glass plates it seems that most of the focus of their travel was in Palestine. Nearly half of these glass plates are stored in the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne.

Warning: fopen(/home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/cache/88db9a90bf2ec5a1d9edbc7aecf62ceb) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 128

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 129

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 130

Warning: fopen(/home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/cache/08cb6b41c72b35d6e232f2733439b3d7) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 128

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 129

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 130

Warning: fopen(/home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/cache/c3cd6a5d4c12cc9e2d126107b91ead9b) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 128

Warning: fwrite(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 129

Warning: fclose(): supplied argument is not a valid stream resource in /home/noelense/public_html/kpd-online.info/exchange/ex_func.php on line 130

All Lehnert & Landrock photographs were signed "L&L." Strictly speaking, Lehnert, a sensitive Central European artist shaped by the lush Viennese cultural milieu at the turn of the last century, was the photographer. But as Philippe Cardinal observes in his book "L'Orient D'Un Photographe: Lehnert & Landrock," if it was Lehnert who took them all, it was Landrock, of German birth and Swiss adoption, who made them possible. He ran the shop they founded first in Tunis and later, after World War I, in Cairo; he managed the laboratory, organized Lehnert's expeditions, and marketed their product. Lehnert & Landrock's photographs helped define that portion of the West's understanding of the Orient that was attracted not merely by the exotic but also by the overwhelming beauty and dignity of the traditional Arab environment.

The prints that have been exhibited at the Sony Gallery are the happy result of the discovery in 1982 in Cairo of Lehnert's original glass plates by Dr. Edouard Lambelet, Landrock's grandson-in-law and the present owner of the Cairo Lehnert & Landrock bookstore and publishing house. In turn the quality of the product of these plates has been dramatically transformed through experiments conducted by the young Canadian master printer and photographer Chris Langtvet, who has devoted himself to this collection, working in Egypt and Europe for the past few years, and who is responsible for all of the prints on exhibit.