This essay offers a network theory of early photography of the Middle East. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s elaboration of actor-network theory in Reassembling the Social (2005), it focuses on John Cramb’s 1860 photographs of Jerusalem, Maxime Du Camp’s 1849–50 photographs of Egypt, and Auguste Salzmann’s 1854 photographs of Jerusalem to critique art historical approaches that view these images solely in terms of their aesthetic values or documentary significance. What is slighted in such approaches, it argues, is the orientalist network that undergirds the works of these photographers. This essay discusses the overdetermined production of early photography of the Middle East to demonstrate that the large archive of early photographs of the region are inscribed within a complex web of actors, practices, institutions, as well as cultural, economic, and political relations between the West and the so-called ‘Orient’, a network that provided the logistical means and the conceptual paradigms for the production and consumption of these images.

中文翻译：

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中介视觉：中东和东方网络的早期摄影

本文提供了中东早期摄影的网络理论。借鉴布鲁诺·拉图尔 (Bruno Latour) 在重新组装社会 (Reassemble the Social) (2005) 中对演员网络理论的阐述，重点关注约翰·克拉姆 (John Cramb) 1860 年的耶路撒冷照片、马克西姆·杜坎 (Maxime Du Camp) 1849-50 年的埃及照片和奥古斯特·萨尔兹曼 (Auguste Salzmann) 1854 年的耶路撒冷照片，以批判艺术史仅从审美价值或文献意义的角度来看待这些图像。它认为，这种方法被忽视的是支撑这些摄影师作品的东方主义网络。这篇文章讨论了中东早期摄影的过度制作，以证明该地区早期摄影的庞大档案被铭刻在一个由演员、实践、机构以及文化、经济、