Félix Bonfils was a French photographer and writer who was active in the Middle East.
He was born on 8 March 1831 in Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort and died in Alès in 1885. Félix worked as a bookbinder but in 1860 he joined General d'Hautpoul's expedition to the Levant. Soon after returning from Lebanon he became a photographer, possibly as an amateur. When his son Adrien fell ill, Félix remembered the green hills around Beirut and sent him there to recover, being accompanied by Lydie Bonfils, Félix's wife. When they returned, she was so enthusiastic about the Middle East as Félix had been before so he and his family moved to Beirut in 1867 where they opened a photographic studio called "Maison Bonfils". This decision seemed odd at first but it turned out well; four years after his arrival he reported 15,000 prints of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece, and 9,000 stereoscopic-views. Their studio became "F. Bonfils et Cie" in 1878. Bonfils took photographs in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece and Constantinople (now Istanbul).
In 1872 he published the album “Architecture Antique” (by Ducher press) after presenting some of his pictures to the Société française de photographie. His work became well known for the tourists that travelled to those countries because they bought their photos as souvenirs. He lately opened another studio in Alès (France).
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After settling in the Near East, Bonfils took some panoramic photographs of Constantinople and Damascus.[1]
”The Image of the East: Nineteenth-Century Near-Eastern Photographs by Bonfils” by Gavin (Carney E.S.). From the Collection of the Harvard Semitic Museum, Chicago/London. University of Chicago Press, 1982.