John Beasley Greene

American, born France, 1832–1856

Birth placeParis, France

BiographyJohn Beasley Greene was a French-born American archaeologist based in Paris. A student of photographer Gustave Le Gray, Greene became a founding member of the Société Francaise de photographie and belonged to two societies devoted to Eastern studies. Greene became the first practicing archaelogist to use photography, although he was careful to keep separate files for his documentary images and his more artistic landscapes.

In 1853 at the age of nineteen, Greene embarked on an expedition to Egypt and Nubia to photograph the land and document the monuments and their inscriptions. Upon his return, Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard published an album of ninety-four of these photographs. He returned to Egypt the following year to photograph and to excavate at Medinet-Habu in Upper Egypt, the site of the mortuary temple built by Ramses III. In 1855 he published his photographs of the excavation there. The following year, Greene died in Egypt, perhaps of tuberculosis, and his negatives were given to his friend, fellow Egyptologist and photographer Théodule Devéria.

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