The Construction of the Suez Canal
Photographs by Louis Robert Cuvier

Carried out between 1859 and 1869 under the direction of the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, the construction of a canal linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea through the isthmus of Suez was one of the most important civil engineering achievements of the 19^th-century.

1863 marked a turning point in the management of this project, located in the middle of the desert, with the abandonment of forced labour by Egyptian peasants giving way to a mechanisation effort that was unprecedented in the field of public works at the time. That same year, Louis Robert Cuvier was among the French officials recruited as general foremen by the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez.

In 1866, he was a photographer on the camp installed on the camp on the rocky threshold of El Guisr, the highest point halfway along the route of the canal. From this strategic position, Cuvier made several expeditions that took him as far north as Port-Saïd and as far south as Suez Harbour. His photographs, often dated the day they were taken, represent some of the earliest reportages on the canal. As early as 1867, two years before the opening of the canal, some of them were gathered in the Album de l’Isthme de Suez, a copy
of which is kept at the Musée d’Orsay

As the excavation of the canal entered its final phase, the aim of a photographic campaign was no longer to reveal through images the innovative organisation of the work around the steam engines, or even to depict the development of the infrastructure in sequence. Instead, Cuvier’s approach oscillated between the descriptive precision of his informed view of the machineryused by the Company's partner contractors, and the reproduction of the grandiose scale of the main theatres of operations orchestrated by the Company.

By attesting to the smooth progress of the work and the quality of the equipment installed in an Egyptian territory undergoing profound change, the results of this campaign would be likely to satisfy the needs of the various players involved, whether in terms of documentation or communication. The iconic medium of the industrial age, photography is here put at the service of technological, financial, commercial and diplomatic issues, all of which were exacerbated by the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris. Against a backdrop of Franco-British rivalry for control of the road to the Indies, the prints delivered by Cuvier perpetuated and disseminated the image of a Pharaonic construction site, a showcase for Western modernity in the East.