An extensive photographic archive documenting life in Egypt and Palestine during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Containing many beautifully-composed shots, the collection depicts a wide-range of interesting and thoughtfully chosen subjects including a number of wonderful portraits, as well as street scenes (markets, traders, mosques, children, sail-menders, “Hebrews attending a synagogue”), rural scenes (farming, Bedouin travellers, views along the Nile), and ancient Egyptian sites, with names locations including Cairo, Thebes, Aswan, Luxor, Karnak, and Giza. Pleasingly, the majority of the photographs have highly detailed descriptions to the verso, recording the people, activities, sites, and location depicted. For example, “A sugar-cane stall in the street of Luxor, Upper Egypt”, “a Sudanese street hawker near Citadel, Cairo”, “The village of Bisburini[?] tribe of arabs, near Aswan, Upper Egypt”, and, intriguingly, “Carrying boxes containing relics from the tomb of Tutankhamen to be put on board steamer and taken to Cairo Museum”.

William Arthur Blackburn Leach (1872-1962) was born in Norwich where he attended a local grammar school, later becoming an apprentice carpenter and engineer. After qualifying, in 1902 he moved to China where he obtained a position in the Public Works Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council. He subsequently spent the rest of his working life in Shanghai, where he also involved himself in a Christian Mission school and in helping to support street children. During his time in China, he seized every opportunity to visit other parts of country, taking a close interest in the lives of those who lived there, and, as a talented amateur photographer, documenting his journeys through thousands of photographs. He travelled home to Britain at least four times during his stay in China, with these visits taking the form of round-the-world trips in which he travelled through the Middle East, Egypt, The Holy Land, India and the Far East, where he took a similarly enthusiastic interest in learning about and recording the day-to-day lives of the local people. On his final return to Britain in 1926, Leach took to lecturing, giving a great many talks on his experiences in China and the numerous other countries which he had traversed.

Provenance: From the estate of William Arthur Blackburn Leach.