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• J.B. Greene: 19th-century American Photographer in Paris and the Middle East

John Beasley (sometimes mistakenly Buckley, which was his father's middle name) Greene was a French-born (in 1832 in Le Havre) American archeologist, who was the son of a Boston banker living in France, whose company, based in Le Havre in late 1854, was called J.B. Greene & Co.

Greene later lived at 10, rue de la Grange Bateliere in the 9th arrondissement of Paris and was a young student of the photographer Gustave Le Gray. In 1854 Greene even became a founding member of the Société Française de Photographie, while also joining two societies devoted to Eastern studies. Greene became one of the first practicing archaeologists to use photography, although he distinguished between his artistic and more documentary work, reportedly keeping two entirely separate files.

As English dealer James Hyman has noted, Greene's images "are some of the most radical in early photography--proto-modernist in their construction." His sparse, minimalist and almost casual style is quite different than most of the more romantic and classic work taken by other early photographers in Egypt and North Africa.

Before his departure to the Middle East, Greene spent about a year studying with Le Gray, who clearly treated him as a protégé--perhaps due to Greene's family money--while teaching him the waxed paper process. While still in Paris and working with Le Gray, Greene made still lifes and landscapes, some of which only exist as paper negatives. It is likely that Le Gray and Greene photographed together in Fontainebleau, given that many of their views were highly similar.

In 1853, the 21-year old Greene made the first of two voyages to Egypt and Nubia as a photographer and archaeologist. At that time, he documented Egyptologist Auguste Mariette’s excavations around the Great Sphinx of Giza. Upon his return, Louis Désiré Blanquart-Évrard published an album of 94 of the over 250 calotypes that he took on this journey, probably published at Greene's own expense instead of for general publication, since the prints are so rare. Le Gray may also have printed some of Greene's negatives.

Greene returned to Egypt the following year to photograph and to excavate at Medinet-Habu in Upper Egypt, the site of Ramses III's temple. He discovered the Celebrated Egyptian Calendar, and he helped clear several Egyptian colossal figures, including the massive figure of Ramses III. In 1855 he published his photographs of the excavation there.

Later that year, Greene went to Algeria at his doctors' recommendation. He photographed the area around Constantine province in northeastern Algeria. Fellow archaeologist Louis Adrien Berbrugger, led him on an expedition to excavate Christian monuments. Greene photographed the excavation in December 1855, January 1856 and April 1856. These photographs are collected in an album in the Academie des inscriptions gifted by Berbrugger.

Greene died in Egypt, reportedly in Cairo in November of 1856, possibly of tuberculosis, but there are other theories. His negatives were bequeathed to fellow Egyptologist and photographer Théodule Devéria. Despite an untimely death at the age of only 24, Greene left a wealth of photographs, all from the waxed paper negative process between the years of 1852-1856.

His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; George Eastman House, Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne; Smithsonian, American Art Museum; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Canada; National Gallery of Australia; J. Paul Getty Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and many other institutions.

For more information, see: History of Photography (Vol. 5, No. 4, October 1981, pp. 305-324) for an article entitled "John B. Greene, an American Calotypist".