Gaddis and Seif
Egyptomania by Egyptians
Attiya Gaddis was born in 1889 in the village of Tot near Luxor. He was the apprentice under a foreign photographer as a boy and at 18 years old opened up his own studio in Luxor Hotel in 1907. In 1912 , Gaddis partnered with Girgus Seif and moved their new studio to the Winter Palace during the days of great discoveries and excavations in Egypt. They expanded the studio and darkroom to include the books, jewelry, and a souvenir shop that operates today. They photographed the tombs and temples of the Valley of the King and Queens, the Giza pyramids, and the Nubian tribesmen and women.
Gaddis and Seif's partnership ended in 1933 and Seif opened his own studio. Not much is known about Seif and besides that his studio was not very successful. His grandson sold his negatives to a farmer who used them as recycled glass. Although Gaddis was more successful than Seif, they were both important because they were one of the first Egyptians to enter a profession dominated by foreigners and produced quite a lot of materials with 796 glass plate negatives produced by them being housed in The Chicago House Special Collection Archive and many more held by Gaddis' family.
Tomb of Tut-Ank-Amon
Tomb of Seti I
The Two Colossi of Memnon
Hieroglyphic inscription
After the split, Gaddis continued his photo studio and his genre portraits were distinct to other studios. Genre photos are photos of ordinary Egyptians such as local tradesmen, farmers, watercarriers, etc. They were very popular among tourists and many genre portraits by other studios were awkwardly posed as they sometimes were people dressed like ordinary Egyptians. Gaddis' portraits however, were different as his subjects seemed more relaxed and sometimes smiling possibly due to shared language and culture. His family still has a large collection of digital prints and postcards which is being sold at Gaddis & Co.
The famous Clossi of Memnon
In our collections, we have multiple postcards from Gaddis & Co. featuring glossy black and white photos of Ancient Egyptian monuments and buildings. The more distinct statues are photographed closeup so that details are more apparent. For large complexes, he takes landscape and aerial photos of the sites to demonstrate how massive these archaeological sites are and the power Ancient Egypt has to develop these massive complexes.
Statue at Cairo Museum
Temple at the Valley of the Queens
Temple of Ramses II
Meinet Habu
REFERENCES
Golia, M. “Luxor's First Local Lens.” AramcoWorld, Jan. 2015, archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/201501/luxor.s.first.local.lens.htm.