| Schoolhouse Press |
| Driskel Vintage Photography |
| Elphantine Isle 1900 |
| Anonymous - Elephantine Isle c.1900 vintage silver print |
| Driskel Vintage Photography
The Driskel Vintage Photography gallery at the Schoolhouse Center for Art and Design in Provincetown, MA presents a collection of vintage photographs of late nineteenth century North Africa. Scenes of Morocco and Egypt in blinding southern light evoke the exotic world so influential upon artists of the nineteenth century. Romanticism in the sensual Orientalist paintings of Chasserieu and Delacroix, and the exotic dreamings of artists as diverse as Ingres, Gerome and Matisse all derive from this region. Here, however, we see in these tourists’ photographic souvenirs more of the real story of this place. We see a less romanticized world in small delicate scenes of the markets, the streets and the people. Mothers with their children look at us suspiciously from the bazaars of Marrakech, Fez, Rabat, and Casablanca. The Elephantine Isle of the Nile shaded by palms, a blind holy beggar, and the rooftops of Cairo present a world inviting, yet impenetrable in small silvery and sepia prints. At a time when photographers were recording every historical monument of Western European culture for an adventure-ravenous public, lavish photo albums were also bringing faraway places in the American West, the Near and the Far East to Victorian parlors.
The Schoolhouse Center is located at 494 Commercial Street in Provincetown's historic East End Gallery District. The Galleries are open daily from 11 and always by appointment. For more information please call Larry Collins at (508) 487.4800. |
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