During the second half of the 19th century, one of the best-known and most successful photographic entrepreneurs in the Middle East was Felix Bonfis (1831-1885), the founder of Beirut's first major photo studio. The scale of Bonfis' enterprise was extremely wide, which, besides standard studio portraiture also included diverse series consisting of hundreds of photographs of historical sites, scenes and peoples from Turkey, Syria, Egypt and Palestine. To ensure this enormous photographic production output, Bonfis kept a large number of employees, including his wife, Lydia and his son Adrien.(1) After Felix Bonfis’ death, the studio continued to prosper, but perhaps due to Adrien's other business projects, the Armenian photographer Abraham Guiragossian came on board as the studio’s co-owner in 1909. Ten years later, in 1918, he managed to acquire the Bonfils family business in full from Lydia Bonfils, along with its entire archive of negatives.(2)

According to photo historian Irini Apostolou, Guiragossian had moved to Beirut in 1888 where he studied under the photographer Garabed Krikorian.(3) The specific details of Bonifis-Guiragossian collaboration are unknown, but it is beyond doubt that Guiragossian was one of the studio’s main camera operators, because Adrien was primarily engaged in hotel business during those years, and Lydia was already in her old age. After the 1918 acquisition, Guiragossian maintained the Bonfils’ trademark name and presented himself as the legendary firm’s legal successor on his seals and blanks. His photographic work of the 1920s-30s was mostly limited to the production of portraits. These are tidy, tastefully designed photographic image-objects, which nevertheless, fully adhere to the popular standards of the day. In parallel to this work, Guiragossian continued to publish Bonfils’ scenic and architectural photographs in the form of albums and postcards. Operating at least until the end of 1932, the Bonfis-Guiragossian establishment was one of the longest surviving photographic organisations in the region along with Istanbul's Sebah & Joillier studio.(4)

1) On Felix Bonflis see William H. Rockett, ‘The Bonfils Story’, Saudi Aramco World, November-December, 1983, pp.8–31

2) Pierre-Lin Renié. ‘Felix Bonflis’, in John Hannavy, Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Routeldge, New York, 2013, p.174

3) The photographer’s dates of birth and death are also taken from this research paper. See Irini Apostolou, ՛Photographes Français et Locaux en Orient Méditerranéen au xix^e siècle։ Quelques Cas de Collaboration՛, Bulletin du Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem, vol. 24, 2013, p.8

4) Robert A. Sobieszek, Carney E. S. Gavin. Remembrances of the Near East: The Photographs of Bonfils, 1867-1907, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House and the Harvard Semitic Museum, 1980, p.7: According to some other sources, the studio shut down in 1938. See the info page on the Bonfils Studio published by the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, http://heritage.bnf.fr/bibliothequesorient/en/felix-bonfils-art

Vigen Galstyan, 2018