Kings, emirs, and aerial views from the 1930s Levant

Coull, Adam / Martin, Elsie. [Photo Album - RAF presence in Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt].

€ 9,500.00

Two beautifully presented photo albums with hand-designed borders, captions, and titles in 1930s Art Deco style, featuring numerous photographs of Egypt, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. Of particular interest are photos of King Faisal I of Iraq, Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi (1885-1933) and his brother, Emir Abdullah I of Jordan, Abdullah I bin Al-Hussein (1882-1951) on an official visit to an RAF base. A third visiting dignitary, Undersecretary of State for Air Sir Philip Sassoon (1888-1939), was himself an avid aviator photographed in the process of making the first inspection of overseas RAF bases.

The identity of the photographers is clear, as their marriage certificate was laid in: Adam Neish Coull, Scottish RAF Corporal, and Elsie May Martin, English bookfolder working in Ismailia, Egypt. That Coull was a pilot is obvious from the numerous aerial views and snaps of planes, but while many interwar RAF pilots took aerial photographs, these are often particularly striking: they at once show off Coull's artistic eye and the knowledge of an expert 1930s aviator who appreciated both the mechanics of an airplane and the art of flight. Photographed from the air are several Fairey IIIF Mk. IV biplanes; in Amman airsheds and in flight are the Fairey Gordons and a Vickers Victoria, including an interesting shot of the interior of the Victoria. A towering Handley Page H.P.42 passenger plane, this aircraft named Hanno (captioned "Hannibal" after its class) appears deceptively small against the open desert. This same aircraft was later prominently featured in the Strand Film Company's 15-minute documentary, Air Outpost, which describes 24 hours in the Imperial Airways airfield at Sharjah, in what would become the United Arab Emirates. Even aerial tasks are photographed: a pilot in front of a two-seater banking, a photograph of a bomb sight, and the way the landing ground at Azrak was apparently made clear to pilots via a giant petroglyph of a camel. Coull's own plane was likely a Bristol F.2B Fighter, featured in one of the larger photographs.

Martin and Coull evidently travelled together extensively, documenting what they saw: photographs span Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Egypt, and within them candid city scenes of Jerusalem, Ma'an, Amman and the Wadi Rum district, and ruins at Jerash and Petra. Included are shots of the Hejaz Jordan Railway, with view of a train from the air and another, captioned, "Lawrence's Bridge", of the Amman Bridge viaduct. Kerak and Ajlun Castles are shown from the air, as are the Suez Canal and the Rutenberg Hydroelectric dam. Two photographs show the original Allenby (King Hussein or Al-Karameh) Bridge, which is understood to have been destroyed by the 1927 Jericho earthquake. Either the bridge survived the earthquake or perhaps a few included photos were taken earlier than the photographers' dates suggest.

The Coulls rarely appear together in photographs, largely because they are each busy photographing the other: clambering over rocks, sunbathing in swimwear, golfing, Elsie posing with a rifle on the road from Jerusalem to Amman. Their collection presents an important record of the interwar Middle East, and they frame it with style.

Hint of wear to albums, photographs fine.