A photographic house in Cairo, since 1904.
Rudolf Franz Lehnert, a Bohemian photographer trained at the Vienna Institute of Graphic Arts, reached Tunisia in 1903 and was overpowered by the charm of the Orient. In 1904 he and Ernst Heinrich Landrock, a Saxon with a head for business, opened a studio in Tunis. Lehnert photographed the desert, the oasis and the people of the Maghreb; Landrock published the work as prints, photogravures and postcards sold across Europe.
The First World War interned both men. They regrouped in Leipzig and on 4 October 1924 landed in Alexandria to begin again in Cairo. Lehnert went back to Tunisia in 1930; Landrock stayed, and in 1936 opened the bookshop at 44 Sherif Street. Before the Second World War he passed the business to his Swiss stepson Kurt Lambelet, which saved it from the sequestration of German property and, later, from the nationalisations of the 1950s.
The glass plates
After the war the plates were boxed and forgotten. In 1982 Kurt's son, Dr. Edouard Lambelet, found them under decades of dust in a corner of the shop. Their cleaning, identification and printing brought the work back: exhibitions in Paris, Lausanne, Frankfurt, Cairo and Tunis, books by Philippe Cardinal and Michel Mégnin, and prints held today by the British Museum, the Getty, the V&A and the Library of Congress.
Six dates
- 1904 — Studio founded in Tunis
- 1924 — Arrival in Egypt; business established in Cairo
- 1936 — Bookshop opens at 44 Sherif Street
- 1982 — Glass plates rediscovered
- 1985 — First exhibition, Paris
- Today — 36 Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street, first floor, run by Dr. Edouard and Roswitha Lambelet
The shop today
Books in four languages, Lehnert's photographs printed in our own workshop, postcards from the past, and gifts made with our seal. The oldest foreign-founded bookshop in Egypt is small, family-run, and open.