John Beasley Greene

View of Luxor

1854
salted paper print from waxed paper negative

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In the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland · as of July 2026

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

On the first of three trips to Egypt, John Beasley Greene created some 200 photographs. His work rarely documented favorite tourist sites in a conventionally descriptive manner; rather, he concentrated on poetic landscapes and archaeologically significant monuments. In this haunting photograph of Luxor, Greene's ability to depict expansive pictorial space is clearly evident. By surrounding the low, blocklike forms of the site's architecture with large vistas of vacant desert and sky, he emphasized a feeling of isolation and abandonment.

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