Egyptian dreamworld

20 Jul — 20 Oct 2019 at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, Switzerland

27 August 2019

Egyptian dreamworld. Courtesy of Museum Rietberg

The exhibition presents sixty original prints from the 1870s by the photographers Pascal Sebah and Émile Béchard, who were based in Cairo.

With great skill they designed visual dreams for tourists, but relied on real people and real settings to create their images. ‘Egyptian dreamworld’ reveals how the photographers went about staging this dreamworld with actors and then pieced it together, shot by shot.

Museum Rietberg

The Museum Rietberg, one of the largest art museums in Switzerland, is administered by the City of Zurich. With a focus on the traditional and contemporary arts and cultures of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania, it has some 32,600 objects and 49,000 photographs in its collections. Most of the objects are on public display, either in the museum’s galleries or in its open storeroom.

Museum profile

Location

Zurich, Switzerland

Founded in

1852