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Old photos of Bedouin nomads, 1898
- craigching 5y ago1898 is pretty early in the technology of photography, maybe I didn't read carefully enough, but I would like to know what was used to take these photographs. They are very interesting and look better than I would expect for 1898!
- pvg 5y agoA little bit more about the people who took photos and all of the photos can be found here. The submitted article is more or less blogspam https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/colony.html As to the history of photography, when these were taken Fenton's [in]famous pictures of the Crimean War were already 50 years old. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky colour pics of the Russian empire are of about the same early 20th century vintage.
- craigching 5y agoAh, thanks a lot for that link, much more information! The OP looks to be a bit misleading as well, not all of the photographs were necessarily from 1898: The majority of the images depict Palestine (present day Israel and the West Bank) from 1898 to 1946.
- libraryofbabel 5y agoHere’s a Library of Congress collection of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky’s colour photographs from the 1900s and 1910s; I particularly love his color portrait of Leo Tolstoy, who seems such a quintessential 19th-century figure but in fact lived long enough to sit for a color photograph in 1908: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=prok https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=prok
- OJFord 5y agoIt certainly is 'blogspam' - at least one of the photos, complete with caption, is lifted from Wikipedia [0] (not even Wikipedia's source's caption [1]). [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin [1] - https://www.loc.gov/item/2019694946/ https://www.loc.gov/item/2019694946/
- hellbannedguy 5y agoSmiling makes me think it was later, along with the white woman, and baby.
- skhr0680 5y agoOld photos can look amazing because they used really large film. What is considered a full frame sensor now was the cellphone camera of its time.
- formerly_proven 5y agoIndeed, this is why Leica, the inventors of using 35 mm film for stills, called it Kleinbild - “small image”. At the time people doubted you could make optics good enough for this to work out, but Zeiss (inventors of modern optical engineering) and Leitz proved those naysayers wrong.
- lm28469 5y agoYep, my 1943 photography book calls 35mm "miniature format"
- ginko 5y agoIt's over 50 years after the invention of photography. Plate photography was already quite a robust technology at that point in time. Sensitivity and exposure times weren't too bad either. The first experimental color photographs were made some 20 years earlier. For reference this color photo was made about 10 years after these: https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.03959/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.03959/
- danlugo92 5y agoI wonder how much different would 1798 look from 1898.
- allovertheworld 5y agoI think before the industrial revolution, things definitely moved a lot slower.
- OJFord 5y agoSuch as the camels, and women sitting at the stone mill?
- jart 5y agoThe Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor, because I am a river to my people! https://youtu.be/DvH6PT7I_dI https://youtu.be/DvH6PT7I_dI
- noisy_boy 5y agoThis scene amused me to no end when I watched it: --- T.E. Lawrence: My friends, we have been foolish. Auda will not come to Aqaba. Not for money... Auda abu Tayi: No. T.E. Lawrence: ...for Feisal... Auda abu Tayi: No! T.E. Lawrence: ...nor to drive away the Turks. He will come... because it is his pleasure. Auda abu Tayi: Thy mother mated with a scorpion.
- focom 5y agoBeside cell phone and some western clothing, it still is the same vibe more than 100 year after.
- samdg 5y agoCurrent title: "Old and photos of Bedouin nomads, 1898". I'm guessing the "spectacular" was omitted from the original title to be less clickbaity, but the "and" should be removed as well.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dang 5y agoFixed now. Thanks!
- motyar 5y agoSomeone please colorise them all
- tgv 5y agoI'm no fan. It does kind of bridge the gap with modern expectations, but it's often so drab and in very similar color palettes, that the bridging effect will soon be gone: everyone will recognize that palette as old as B/W.
- dqpb 5y ago“123 years from now, these images will be transmitted on a vast world wide information network. These small windows into your life will make impressions on the minds of thousands of future strangers across the globe. And incredibly, the magic of this journey through space and time, will be cheapened by embedded pop up ads.” - Bedouin Oracle, 1898
- chunyu_wang 5y agoI had the opportunity to learn about Bedouins in my anthropology class two years ago. It's nice to finally see some pictures of them. Their eyes seem quite large to me.
- ammmir 5y agoWhat wonderful pictures! I just realized I rarely see people smiling or looking happy in photos taken in the 19th century. I wonder why? Maybe cameras of the time were too big and serious looking, and everyone ended up posing.
- ruph123 5y agoThe reason I heard is that it took a long time to take a shot and was expensive. So you did not want to mess up a shoot with a smile. Better go for the safe option and put on your RBF.
- s5300 5y agoI was looking at a picture of a Bedouin nomad from 1898 and he suddenly turned into a very bright Adidas shoe advertisement
- echelon 5y agoThat Bedouin nomad never imagined you watching him this day, on your couch, using your glowing pocket screen. Or being used to sell tennis shoes. Imagine what will become of our memories? Maybe future us can simulate the past so well that we can recreate it. Maybe we're just echoes of the past in this very moment, playing out for dwellers of an advanced future. Maybe they're omnipotent. They can capture all the radiation that gets emitted and reverse calculate everything. Our brain states. No simulation at all, but a recreation. We could be in a mundane No Mouth Cannot Scream or Roko's Basilisk scenario this very moment. Implausible, but just maybe... Maybe we're ads for a fancier metaverse platform.
- pjmlp 5y agoThey will just vanish, so it is volatily of the storage mediums we use nowadays.
- saltyfamiliar 5y agoSame here. I ignored it and kept scrolling then suddenly all the pictures turned into the same adidas ad at once. Very dystopian.
- s5300 5y agoI think this may apply https://youtu.be/_5aYyl-PG-w https://youtu.be/_5aYyl-PG-w
- quickthrower2 5y agoLucky you I got Elon Musk ads for some crap. Not sure if he approved of his face in these ads though!
- executesorder66 5y ago
- okareaman 5y agoPolygyny, where one male mates with more than one female while each female mates with only one male, is thought to be the fundamental mating system of animals. https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Polygyny.html https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Pol... I didn't realize there was a more specific form of polygamy that is thought to be the fundamental mating system of animals
- bawolff 5y agoI don't get what they mean by "fundamental". Plenty of animals don't mate like that.
- user3939382 5y agoI took an interest in the Bedouins after seeing the film Lawrence of Arabia, which features them. If you haven’t seen it and have a few hours to kill, you definitely should.
- pimeys 5y agoThis one is also one of the rare movies that benefit from a higher resolution. Watch it as 4k from a big screen. It will look fantastic.
- specialist 5y agoYes and: I saw Lawrence of Arabia in its original format when the Cinerama in Seattle reopened. Blew my mind. Sure, I had seen it on cable and thought "meh". In its original format, it's a totally different movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_of_Arabia_%28film%29#Production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_of_Arabia_%28film%29#... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CinemaScope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CinemaScope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Cinerama#Major_1990s_renovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Cinerama#Major_1990s_r... I have no idea how 4K and CinemaScope compare. It seems the film has been further restored since I last viewed it.
- jart 5y agoThat's what David⁸ did in Prometheus T10m58s and he enjoyed the film so much that the next two Alien movies were about a robot imitating T.E. Lawrence.
- 618033988749894 5y agoI highly recommend the book Lawrence in Arabia, by Scott Anderson, which puts that story in context. It follows four people active in the area at the time: TE Lawrence (who first went to the Middle East as an archaeologist), an American employee of Standard Oil, the leader of a Jewish spy ring working with the British, and a Turkish official. Very interesting. https://www.powells.com/book/lawrence-in-arabia-9780307476418 https://www.powells.com/book/lawrence-in-arabia-978030747641...
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- wincy 5y agoInteresting that they say “taxation” of caravans was their source of income, so were they effectively grifters making caravans pay them for protection money?
- cobbzilla 5y agoI read that as a very polite way of saying that, historically speaking, they were widely regarded as thieves. As in, if you traveled in certain places of the desert without an armed escort, you would be robbed.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stkdump 5y agoI think this is an interesting thing. If you scale the idea of 'country' down to the size of a tribe, then you can call it taxation, whithout any euphemism. They control/own the land, they decide the 'laws' on it. If that is good or bad for development of a region is another question.
- amitport 5y agoIt is not taxation. They "protected" against themselves not anyone else. And I emphasis, protection is not the only Bedouin occupation. But it is one and there is no need to sugar coat it.
- kaveh_h 5y agoIt’s called taxation, in the Middle ages peasants we’re taxed by the King and the only thing offered was protection. Government services is a modern world thing.
- amitport 5y agoAnd even in the middle ages there were criminals. People that rubbed villagers on the side of the road. People that brunt down their fields and asked for money. There is a difference between violently robing people and taxation. This discussion is somewhat sureal to me.
- lasfter 5y agoI find it interesting that the photos of the men often showed them enjoying themselves while the photos of the women often showed them working, and there were no photos with the roles reversed. I hope that isn't reflective of how their lives were.
- bserge 5y agoMen's work was fighting, hunting, enslaving helpers and maybe heavy lifting. It's like the government and citizens: you do all the work, they guarantee your "safety and wellbeing". But technically you're kind of a slave.
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- acurate 5y agoThat's not accurate - there are photos there of men with weapons, with falcons, on horseback, etc., that reference their work. And there are photos of women not working.
- radu_floricica 5y agoIt's never a good idea to go intro gender conversations these days, but a couple of points: 1. there were plenty of societies where one sex had it worse than the other. From what I know of theirs, I'd be shocked to here they were egalitarian. 2. Women had what we'd recognize today as jobs, and in a tribal society those were just as hard as they needed to be - it was more or less an extended family. Men on the other hand used weapons, which suggest they were quite a lot more exposed to being killed. Women would have been harmed only in a wipeout, but as a man you're never sure you'll still be alive next year. Romance aside, I know what I'd chose.
- BeetleB 5y agoNo mention on which part of the Middle East this is?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- anonleb4 5y agoThe term wasn't really used before the mid 1900s. It's a relatively recent term.
- yosito 5y agoAll of it. They were nomads.
- rvense 5y agoIt both mentions Jerusalem and shows the pyramids, so they are not from one place.
- Teracotage 5y agoIn Syrai Badia, is a region of desert, semi-desert and steppe covering 500,000 square meters, Bedduin is mostly derived from Badia or primitive in Arabic.
- graycat 5y agoOf course, now Saudi Arabia has changed a lot due to oil revenue and, then, construction of cities, especially near the coast of the Persian Gulf. But in recent years, surprisingly, Saudi Arabia is well into farming! The have borrowed the idea used in dryer parts of the US called center point irrigation. So, from a central pivot, they have a long boom, on wheels, that goes round and round spraying water drawn from the center point. For the water? There was lots of it in the area some thousands of years ago, and it accumulated in fresh water aquifers now some hundreds of feet down. In addition, on their west coast, that is, along the Red Sea, there are some mountains and, surprisingly, moisture blows in from the west and generates rain in the mountains. Soooooo, they've been capturing the runoff from that rain and using it for more agriculture.
- baud147258 5y ago> fresh water aquafers now some hundreds of feet down. though once the aquafers are empty, they won't refill anytime soon with the current precipitations
- graycat 5y agoRight. I thought about including that as the aquifers and oil wells dry up, they will have to use solar and/or nuclear power to desalinate the water! Also to get from agriculture as much revenue as they are getting from oil, they will have to grow a lot more crops! I left out that, IRCC, actually they are making money now exporting some of the crops they are growing from the center point irrigation!.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- martinpw 5y ago"Arabian Sands" is an fascinating book describing travels though the empty quarter in Saudi Arabia and interactions with the Bedouin at a time when their way of life was about to start changing fast (1940s): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Sands https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Sands
- mactitan 5y agoJust about to post the same.My copy disappeared but I think it had great photos. There was a vengeful account of a tribe killing a boy left alone. He was trapped inside cliffs with no escape. Thesiger Said he respected Bedouin more than his Eton chums.
- publicola1990 5y agoAnd also Theseiger's "Marsh Arabs".
- dchs 5y ago+1 to this! Amazing book!
- afandian 5y agoFor those of you who saw the "instrument", noticed that it's a bagpipe, check out the huge range of bagpipes from round the world: http://www.bagpipesociety.org.uk/guide/ http://www.bagpipesociety.org.uk/guide/
- quickthrower2 5y agoI noticed it was a bagpipe but wondered if it is a single animals skin, or generally how was it made?
- 618033988749894 5y agoIt's probably a goat, maybe a sheep. But yeah, I've seen (and heard) a bagpipe made out of a single goat skin. It was Bulgarian, I think. The skin seemed completely intact, except for where the head and feet were replaced by pipes.
- afandian 5y agoGenerally you hollow out a goat, then stick blow-pipes, chanters, drones or stitch closed the arms and legs. I don't know what kind of pipe this is, but compare to the French Bodega and Bulgarian Kaba Gaida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaba_gaida#/media/File:BulgarianKabaGaidaPlayer.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaba_gaida#/media/File:Bulgari... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega_(bagpipe)#/media/File:Bodegaire_-_Lo_Gran_Passacarr%C3%A8ra_-_Carnaval_Biarn%C3%A9s_2016_10.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodega_(bagpipe)#/media/File:B...
- slim 5y agoYes it's a bagpipe. It's called Mezwed here in north africa. It's made of a single goat skin, although it's not hollowed out, the animal is skinned normally but carefully as to not leave holes or thin sections. Then it's stitched back to the shape of the bagpipe. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizwad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizwad
- jonplackett 5y agoFilm really is a beautiful medium. Digital cameras have only just, (nearly?) caught up to the quality
- 2rsf 5y agoInterestingly they look and behave quite similar even today as one can see in southern Israel, some replaced camels with an old beaten Subaru 4x4 but they still used tents, grow animals and wear traditional clothes
- flyinglizard 5y agoToyota Corollas, but yes, pretty much the same (at least as you go farther into the desert).
- prepend 5y agoI once had tea with some bedouins in Jordan’s Wadi Rum around 2015 or so and these pictures could have been of that tea. The tent looked the same. They were really nice people who just stopped some travelers for tea and a chat. They weren’t selling anything and wouldn’t take any gives or thank yous. Frequently when traveling you’ll get some fake hospitality experiences that end up just “gift shopping” but this experience was neat to me as they seemed just interested in travelers. I wonder how frequently they do that as the road wasn’t super busy, but also wasn’t abandoned. We maybe spent half an hour and no else came by.
- IndySun 5y agoAlso traveled that area, late 90s thru 2000. Somewhere with caves we went scrambling all over until through one hole a friend and I had clearly and unknowingly climbed into a families living room. Their first words (in Arabic), would you like some tea? You're english, right? We hadn't realised (or ignorantly) but we were scrambling over a lived in area, peoples property. The reaction from everyone we randomly met was the same, warm, smiling.
- prepend 5y agoI had something similar when hiking around Petra. Behind the main city are caves that seemed inhabited. And I was embarrassed to explore so. I guess when you’re a Bedouin, you adopt some good hospitality traits.
- cheese_goddess 5y agoIntereseting way of milking goats: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZaZgfe2Gyk0/XqHI23JcnqI/AAAAAAAAWbU/__JJl59tPlMHDesbJI8mUWxVQ3oJz67ogCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/old_photos_Bedouin%2B%252821%2529.jpg https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZaZgfe2Gyk0/XqHI23JcnqI/AAAAAAAAW... The animals are in a line bunched up close and alternating facing so that one animal has its head on the shoulders of the two animals next to itself and looking towards their rear. I haven't seen that before. More peculiar is that I can't see them eating anything. Normally when animals are milked, it's lunch (or dinner) time. They line up in front of their troughs and they're milked while they eat. Typically there's some kind of divider or railing to keep them more or less still also. Otherwise you need to have really well disciplined and calm animals or you'll get lots of hooves in milk pots and so on. It's also very interesting to see how they dried their cheeses on top of their tents. These look like small, lactic cheeses. If they had a good source of salt they would probably be very high on salt both to help preserve and sanitise them and also to replenish the salt lost by the people to the heat of the desert. Anyway that must have been really strong cheese: sun-dried, very salty, goat's milk cheese. Yum.
- h2odragon 5y agoThem critters is tied to something.
- cheese_goddess 5y agoThey could be but it's not visible in the picture. There might be a long wooden bar in between them. There sure is no food though.
- h2odragon 5y agoI'm thinking ground rope and short leads. I've seen something similar done with pack goats. scatterign food on the rope helps train them to it, they'll wait more patiently if they know the ritual includes food sometime. even just a snack.
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- cletus 5y agoThese photos are of stunning quality. I'm not sure I've seen any 19th century photos that come close, even with retouching and postprocessing. But also the lighting is incredible. Like it looks more like something associated with a more modern (ie post-WWII) technique. I didn't see any mention of the provenance of these photos. Anyone know?
- illwrks 5y agoSeconded. They are stunning photos if genuine.
- flapjaxy 5y agoAny reason why you think they might not be? On a side note, other than the deception, if these are "fake" current photos that's still be interesting.
- InitialLastName 5y agoThe photos could simply be misattributed in terms of date (Bedouins in various places had this sort of lifestyle well into the 20th century, AIUI). Maybe someone who knows more about historical firearms than me can confirm whether the guns and ammo belts (which are the most visible bits of industrial technology) in the photos are viable for late 19th C.
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- polalavik 5y agoThese are crazy high quality it makes it reallyy questionable. I just looked up photos from 1900 on getty images and there's a graininess to them and a distinct quality to them. But I'm no photograph expert.
- blululu 5y ago
- devchix 5y agoI've always wondered why desert nomads dress like they do. Given modern fabrics and constructions, would you chose to dress like this to go to the desert? I understand it is an area of extreme heat in the day and extreme cold when the sun goes down, the head and face protection I understand, but the flowing, multi-layered robes? The conjecture would be that they insulate more than disperse heat via evaporative cooling? Seems like we have cold-weather gears figured out with cold and high-altitude expeditions, but desert gears?
- ars 5y agoThere are several reasons. One is that white fabric is transparent, and the sun will reach the skin. Black fabric blocks the sun, and the heat is kept in the upper robe, and doesn't penetrate inward. Another reason is the structure of the garment - it's a robe that is open from top to bottom, this allows air currents to flow along the skin, drawing away moisture and cooling the person. The heat of the sun acts as the engine that causes that airflow (i.e. it's worth slightly higher temperature, which will then cause the hotter air to rise up, and out the neck carrying moisture with it). And finally, you don't want a sunburn. Modern heat control is all about exposing the skin for the cooling, but it relies on shelter and sunscreen to block the sun. If you can't block the sun then you want a garment to do it.
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- garfieldnate 5y agoDoes anyone know the name of that wind instrument is?