Visions from Abroad : Historical and Contemporary Representations of Arabia

Arabia, with its holy cities in Hejaz and its Bedouin-populated deserts, holds a special place in the Western imaginary. Visions from Abroad explores this fantasy, presenting Saudi Arabia as it was seen by visitors born outside the peninsula. These visitors were often idiosyncratic adventurers as well as artists, and this book tells their stories too—like that of the British naval officer Richard Burton, who passed himself off as an Afghan physician and magician in order to enter Arabia in 1853.

Including painting, sculpture, engravings and photography as well as installation and comics, this publication presents an extraordinary collection of historical, anthropological and artistic images in which the works of great Orientalist artists such as Léon Belly, Georg Emanuel Opiz and Émile Prisse d’Avesnes are juxtaposed with those of contemporary photographers such as Raymond Depardon, Abbas and Humberto Da Silveira.