Porteuse d'eau au Caire [Water Carrier in Cairo]

Felix Bonfils was a French photographer active in the Middle East and North Africa during the 1860s and 1870s. Working primarily with albumen prints and large-format glass plate negatives, he documented architectural monuments, landscapes, and ethnographic subjects across Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the Levant. His extensive archive represents one of the most comprehensive European photographic records of the Ottoman territories in that era. Bonfils established a studio in Beirut and produced thousands of images that circulated widely in European markets as both fine art prints and commercial stereographs.