Book Review: Eternal Egypt

Archaeology Magazine (review by Mark Rose)

At the End of Days, when all the coffee-table books on ancient Egypt rise up to be judged, where will The Eternal Light of Egypt stand? The book, a Thames & Hudson offering, features 126 images by modern-day photographer Sarite Sanders. An introductory essay by Egyptologist Dorothea Arnold of the Metropolitan Museum of Art places Sanders's images in historical context by summarizing the work of photographic pioneers such as Maxime du Camp, Francis Frith, and Félix Teynard, as well as later practitioners, such as Harry Burton, who documented the Tut excavation.

Sanders's images are introduced by quotes from ancient texts and early tourists, from Mark Twain to Florence Nightingale, presumably selected by Sanders. These are nice overall, though neither Arnold, in her introduction, nor Sanders could resist dragging out Shelley's old saw "Ozymandias" in conjunction with a photo of a fallen colossus.

As for the images themselves, all were taken using infrared black-and-white film, which creates unusual effects. Close-ups of reliefs are almost unnaturally sharp, but in larger scenes, monuments seem grainy and skies spectral. At times the effects, combined with Sanders's point of view, go awry.

See the above page for the full review.