| Names: | Other: F. Bonfils
Other: La Maison Bonfils
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| | Dates: | 1831, 8 March - 1885 | | Born: | France, Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort | | Died: | Alais | | Active: | Lebanon / Palestine / Egypt | | Gender: | Male |
Bonfils was a family firm of French photographers, Félix Bonfils (1831-1886), his son Adrien Bonfils (1860-1929) and finally Lydie Bonfils née Marie Lydie Cabanis (1837-1918), wife of Félix and mother of Adrien.
Félix Bonfils was born in St. Hippolyte du Fort in France in 1831. Originally a bookbinder, in 1860 he enlisted and was sent to the Levant. He liked Lebanon and when his young son Adrien (born 1860) developed respiratory problems, he decided to emigrate. In 1867 the Bonfils family moved to the dry climate of Beirut and opened a photographic studio there. Félix photographed extensively throughout Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece. His work is infused with a sense of exploration and love for his medium. The Maison Bonfils eventually became a large, successful business with branches in Cairo, Alexandria and France. The studio was famous for its Middle Eastern views, and profited from the enormous popularity of organized tours that had opened up tourism in the latter half of the nineteenth century. "Those who are prevented from travelling to these sites through illness, lack of funds, or their domestic situation" wrote Félix in the introduction to his 1878 photographic album Egypt and Nubia "have the possibility to go there at their leisure, at low cost and with little effort, to those countries which many have reached only at the risk of their lives".
In 1878, at the age of 17, Adrien took over the work of photography while his parents ran the studios. As did all large concerns, the firm also hired other photographers to work for them, and the later photographs bearing the Bonfils name are often more professional in their technical execution but less interesting as images.
At some point Adrien turned his back on photography and became an hotelier in Beirut, his mother taking over the family business until she was forced by war to evacuate Beirut in 1917. For many years it was not known that she had taken many of the images published under the Bonfils imprint. Wife of a photographer, mother of a photographer, and a photographer herself, she once said that she was sick of the smell of albumen.
[Contributed by Paul Frecker]
Albums by Felix Bonfils include:
Architecture Antique: égypte, Grèce, Asie Mineure. Album de photographies (1872)
Souvenirs dOrient (1878)Preparing biographies
Further reading
Gavin, Carney ES, 1978, ‘Bonfils and the Early Photography of the Near East‘, Harvard Library Bulletin, vol.XXVI, no.4
| | Portraits
If you have a portrait of this photographer or know of the whereabouts of one we would be most grateful.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
Family history
If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
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 | Felix Bonfils: Dahabieh or travellers' Boat on the Nile |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Egypt: Alexandria |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Egypt: Cairo |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Egypt: Pyramids and the Sphynx |
|  | Felix Bonfils: Femmes musulmanes syriennes à Beyrouth. Costume de ville |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Greece: Athens |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Israel and Palestine: Bethlehem |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Israel and Palestine: Dead Sea |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Israel and Palestine: Jerusalem |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Lebanon: Baalbek |
| | Félix Bonfils: Portraits |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Souvenirs d'Orient |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Syria: Damascus |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Syria: Palmyra |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Temple of Chaffra, Sphynx and Pyramid of Cheops |
|  | Félix Bonfils: Turkey: Constantinople - Istanbul |
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There is a small text on the activities of Félix Bonfils (1831-1885) in Greece included in:
Haris Yiakoumis, "The Acropolis of Athens, 1839 - 1959", Paris/Athens:
Potamos, 2000, p. 35 + several albumen prints reproduced on p. 235 (dated to
1871, but these are late prints after the address added on the negative) and
p. 254.
[Contributed by Marc Fehlmann, May 22, 2006]
| Wikipedia has a biography of this photographer. | Show on this site | Go to website | | Getty Research, Los Angeles, USA has an ULAN (Union List of Artists Names Online) entry for this photographer. This is useful for checking names and they frequently provide a brief biography. | | Go to website |
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
Photographic collections are a useful means of examining large numbers of photographs by a single photographer on-line.
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