Félix Bonfils

He was born in Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort and died in Alès. Félix worked as a bookbinder but in 1860 he joined General d'Hautpoul's expedition to the Levant. Soon after returning from Lebanon he became a photographer.

In 1857, he married Marie-Lydie Cabanis. When his son, Adrien, fell ill, Félix remembered the green hills around Beirut and sent him there to recover, being accompanied by Félix's wife.[1] The family moved to Beirut in 1867 where they opened a photographic studio called "Maison Bonfils".[2][3]

Maison Bonfils produced thousands of photographs of the Middle East. He worked with both his wife and his son. Their studio became "F. Bonfils et Cie" in 1878. They photographed posed scenes, dressed up in Middle Eastern regalia, and also stories from the Bible.[2] Bonfils took photographs in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece and Constantinople (now Istanbul).[3] While Bonfils produced the vast majority of his work, it is known that his wife, Lydie also made some of the studio portraits, especially those of Middle Eastern women, who were more inclined to pose for a female photographer.[4]

Bonfils was amongst the first photographers to employ the new technique of Photochrom, a photographic colour printing technique, developed in 1880. [5] Maison Bonfils was one of the most prolific studios in the Middle East in the late 19th-century. [6]

Cover of Souvenirs d'Orient, 1878 by Félix Bonfils

After settling in the Near East, Bonfils took some panoramic photographs of Constantinople and Damascus.[7] His work became well known among the tourists that travelled to those countries because they bought photographs as souvenirs. In 1872 he published the album Architecture Antique (by Ducher press) after presenting some of his pictures to the Société française de photographie. He later re-opened a studio in Alès (France) from which he would publish Souvenirs d'Orient; his best-known work. [8]

Select list of publications

• Bonfils, F., Architecture antique : Égypte, Grèce, Asie Mineure, 1872
• Bonfils, F., Catalogue de vues photographiques de l'Orient, 1876
• Bonfils, F., Souvenirs d'Orient, 1878
• Bonfils, F. (with Adrien & Lydie Bonfils), Photographs of the Middle East, circa 1860s-1900s

Selected photographs

• 
  Bedouin Violin Players, c. 1880
• 
  Guardian of the Tomb and his family, c.1880
• 
  Women of Siloé, Palestine, c. 1880
• 
  Road to Bethlehem, c. 1880
• 
  Arab man with a pipe, 1880s
• 
  Well of St. Mary, Nazareth, 1880s
• 
  Bedouin Chief of Palmyra, photochrom, 1880s
• 
  Bedouin mothers carrying their children, photochrom, 1880s
• 
  Chief of the Bedouin shepherds, 1880s
• 
  Woman from Nablus, between 1867 and 1885

• History of Photography
• List of Orientalist artists
• Orientalism

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Félix Bonfils.

• Works by or about Félix Bonfils at Internet Archive
• Photographs by Félix Bonfils at the Canadian Centre for Architecture
• Union List of Artists Names, s.v. "Bonfils, Félix", cited 6 February 2006
• Images by Bonfils
• The Bonfils Story: A Legacy Of Light
• Collection of photos by Bonfils

• Carney, G., The Image of the East: Nineteenth-Century Near-Eastern Photographs by Bonfils,[From the Collection of the Harvard Semitic Museum], Chicago/London. University of Chicago Press, 1982