The Early Photography of Attiya Gaddis - Gaddis & Co. Luxor

If you are a book worm like me, and also have an addiction to the history of Ancient Egypt, no holiday in Luxor is complete until you have browsed the shelves in Gaddis & Co. A shop opened by Attiya Gaddis in 1907, as a photographic studio, over the years the shop has expanded selling hundreds of Amazing books of the history of Ancient Egypt, as well as beautiful gifts. The shop is on the Nile Corniche, just below the Old Winter Palace.

I have been really interested in the 19th Century history of Egypt, I enjoy looking at the old photographs, and one of the photographers I came across was Attiya Gaddis. He became an apprentice to a photographer, and when his mentor died Attiya bought one of his wooden box cameras that had been made in 1860. Attiya and his box camera went all over Egypt for over 50 years. He photographed the history of Ancient Egypt, the Pyramids, the temples of Luxor and Karnack, the Valleys of the Kings and Queens, he developed his photographs and sold them as postcards to the wealthy tourists that came into his shop. If you go into the Gaddis & Co. shop today you can still buy his postcards, along with many other vintage photographs taken in Egypt.

Attiya photographed the very rich, the aristocrats, and royalty that stayed at the Winter palace, and the very poor Egyptians from the villages along the Nile, it's a wonderful record of life starting a hundred years ago.  If you visit the shop today you will be able to see the actual camera that Attiya used for all his early photography.

Tourism to Egypt really took off around the 1830's, after Champollion had deciphered the Rosetta stone in 1822, and brought the ancient Gods words to life again, and the early photographers like Attiya helped so much to encourage people to visit Egypt, his work expressed the ordinary life of Egyptians, and the amazing history of it's antiquities.

This is a photograph that Attiya took in Nubia of one of the villagers. Nubia is the further most point of  Ancient Egyptian supremacy, this is why Ramses 11 built Abu Simbel, to show his authority.