LONDON.- James Hyman Gallery presents ‘Travellers in Antique Lands’, an exhibition of some of the earliest photographs of ancient civilisations that span from the Mediterranean to the Holy Land.

The exhibition takes its title from a phrase in Percy Bysshe Shelly’s famous sonnet Ozymandias (1818), which presents ancient ruins as a metaphor for the fall of dictatorships and the transience of power.

Included are many of the most famous pioneers of early photography: James Anderson, Giacomo Caneva, Maxime du Camp, J. B. Greene, Eugene Le Dien & Gustave Le Gray, Giorgio Sommer, Emile Pecarrere, Felix Teynard and Louis Vignes. It will include photographs of crumbling monuments, desert scenes, ancient sculpture and excavations across the Middle East.

Giorgio Sommer: The Stones of Pompeii
5 February – 7 March 2014
James Hyman Gallery is also presenting an exhibition of rare early photographs of Pompeii, taken by Giorgio Sommer.

The most famous record of Pompeii was by Giorgio Sommer, one of the most active photographers in mid-19th century Italy. Sommer’s small scale prints, stereo views, and cartes de visite were widely available doing much to popularise Pompeii as a tourist destination, however the large format images that are the subject of this exhibition are extremely rare and are held by very few museums.

The prints in the exhibition are in exceptional condition, having been kept in storage for over a century, and are being exhibited for the first time at James Hyman Gallery.