Félix Bonfils


Félix Adrien Bonfils was a French photographer and writer who was active in the Middle East. He was one of the first commercial photographers to produce images of the Middle East on a large scale and amongst the first to employ a new method of colour photography, developed in 1880.

Life and career

He was born in Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort and died in Alès. Félix worked as a bookbinder but in 1860 he joined General d'Hautpoul's expedition to the Levant. Soon after returning from Lebanon he became a photographer.
In 1857, he married Marie-Lydie Cabanis. When his son, Adrien, fell ill, Félix remembered the green hills around Beirut and sent him there to recover, being accompanied by Félix's wife. The family moved to Beirut in 1867 where they opened a photographic studio called "Maison Bonfils".
Maison Bonfils produced thousands of photographs of the Middle East. He worked with both his wife and his son. Their studio became "F. Bonfils et Cie" in 1878. They photographed posed scenes, dressed up in Middle Eastern regalia, and also stories from the Bible. Bonfils took photographs in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece and Constantinople. While Bonfils produced the vast majority of his work, it is known that his wife, Lydie also made some of the studio portraits, especially those of Middle Eastern women, who were more inclined to pose for a female photographer.
Bonfils was amongst the first photographers to employ the new technique of Photochrom, a photographic colour printing technique, developed in 1880. Maison Bonfils was one of the most prolific studios in the Middle East in the late 19th-century.

Work

After settling in the Near East, Bonfils took some panoramic photographs of Constantinople and Damascus. His work became well known among the tourists that travelled to those countries because they bought photographs as souvenirs. In 1872 he published the album Architecture Antique after presenting some of his pictures to the Société française de photographie. He later re-opened a studio in Alès from which he would publish Souvenirs d'Orient; his best-known work.
Select list of publications
Selected photographs