Re Nissan Perez, p. 11-14: Short essay by the later curator of photography at the Israel Museum on the use of three daguerreotypes taken by a little-known traveller and photographer named Aimé Rochas in Egypt, and used by Maxime DuCamp as calotype reproductions for pl. 1, 9, and 52 in his photographically illustrated book “Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie”, Paris 1852. According to Perez, one of these images includes the figure of DuCamp’s travel comrade, the later famous writer Gustave Flaubert.

Text engl. - Du Camp''s traveling companion Gustave Flaubert once remarked: „I don't know why Maxime hasn't killed himself with this raging mania for photography.“ The Stillness of Hajj Ishmael explores this mania as a manifestation of the cultural hypochondria typical of Du Camp's time and social class,linking the general anxiety of the age over the apparent demise of French culture with the personal travails of Du Camp, who grew up an orphan. The book explores the role played by Nubian sailor Hajj Ishmael in Du Camp's photographs, travel writings, journals and novel as a unique marker of a malaise simultaneously subjective and historical.