A royal tour of the Middle East

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Cairo to Constantinople: Francis Bedford’s Photographs of the Middle East

By Sophie Gordon et al. Introduction by John McCarthy.

In 1862, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) was sent on a tour of the Middle East. This book, which accompanies an exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, documents the journey through the work of Francis Bedford (1815–94), the first photographer to join a royal tour. It details the cultural and political significance that Victorian Britain attached to the region, which was as complex, contested and uncertain in its future then, as it is today. 

The young Prince of Wales had already seen a great deal of Europe and undertaken the first-ever royal visits to Canada and the United States. He was therefore accustomed to travelling, and had demonstrated a physical constitution which tolerated it well. Officially, the purpose of the trip was educational, though there was a very serious political motive too.  The Ottoman Empire was in decline, and was in Britain’s interest to show a presence in the region. In particular, construction of the Suez Canal had begun in 1859 and the British wished to ensure control of the route to India. On a more personal level, the trip was a convenient way of keeping the Prince out of mischief, for his libertine tendencies were to enjoy little freedom as he travelled in a guarded party through such very foreign and often dangerous areas.

In February 1862 the party set out from London on a journey that proved to be an interesting mix of the old and the new. They reached Venice by train, and went on to Alexandria by royal yacht. After visiting Egypt they travelled by sea to Palestine, thereafter riding on horseback through Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, and camping in relatively simple style in the deserts. They then sailed on to Constantinople and Athens before returning to Britain. The Prince met rulers, politicians and local dignitaries, and the British presence made its cultural mark.

Photographer Frances Bedford madesome 200 images on the four-month journey. Despite heavy equipment and lengthy exposure times, the resulting prints are superb. They show many historic locations completely deserted apart from local inhabitants, sometimes staring curiously at the camera while the royal party pose as a group or examine monuments. The isolation of many of these sites imparts to them a monumentality that has now been lost to tourism. Even more sadly, some aspects are all too familiar to us today, such as a view of destroyed houses in Lebanon photographed two years after conflict, entitled ‘Hasbeiya, Scene of the Massacre’. 

Bedford was the first photographer to visit some of these sites, though many had already been painted by David Roberts, whose work was known to the British public in the form of lithographic reproductions. Bedford knew them too – and had taken photographs of some of them – so it is tantalizing to wonder how much he was consciously rivalling painting as he worked. 

The Victorian public was eager to see the photographic reality of so many sites already familiar from Bible reading, and from the (often very dramatic) artistic interpretations of Roberts. Their exhibition in London therefore provoked great interest, and the British Journal of Photography is quoted as describing them as ‘Perhaps the most important photographic exhibition that has hitherto been placed before the public’.  Some were made into prints for public sale, but sadly Bedford himself never became a household name.

Both the book and the exhibition include paintings as well as photographs, and the antiquities the Prince acquired on his trip are also shown and discussed in detail. Fortunately for modern scholarship, Bedford photographed the antiquities, thus creating a record from which the curators of the Royal Collection Trust could identify most of them today.

Both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were interested in technological innovation, so they might also be amused to discover that Prince Edward’s journal of his tour has now been digitized, and can be read online.

Cairo to Constantinople: Francis Bedford’s Photographs of the Middle East  by Sophie Gordon, with Introduction by John McCarthy and contributions from Badr El Hage and Alessandro Nasini is published by the Royal Collection Trust, 2013. 256 pp., over 220 colour illus. ISBN 978 1 905686 18 6