The Ken and Jenny Jacobson Orientalist Photography collection comprises over 4,500 photographic images of the Middle East and North Africa. The majority of the images were created between 1850 and 1920 and record a period when the "Orient," increasingly open and accessible to the West, exerted a compelling allure on western viewers, travelers, scholars and entrepreneurs alike. Works by 164 different photographers and studios present an overwhelmingly western vision of and response to Egypt, the Maghreb and the Levant.

Ken and Jenny Jacobson are photographic art dealers based in England. Ken was born in the United States and holds a B.A. in chemistry from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from King's College, London, where he met Jenny, who was working in research in biochemistry. While pursuing his doctorate Ken became interested in and began collecting nineteenth-century photography. This avocation became a vocation, as what was to have been a gap year devoted to selling photographs before starting a career in scientific research, never ended.

147.7 Linear Feet (103 boxes, 3 flatfile folders)

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