In the Arabah Desert

The Swiss-born painter Eugen Bracht, who later lived in Darmstadt, went on an extended trip to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in 1880. Thus he knew the Arabah (also Arava) desert from his own experience. Bathed in brilliant light he shows the nomads on foot and on camels on their way through this barren landscape, whose panorama he captured with photographic precision. Bracht did not reproduce clichés of the Orientalism of the period, but followed scientifically oriented, ethnographic, and later also paleontological interests.