Antonio Cavilla (1867-1906) att.

TANGIER FROM THE BAY. c.1880. Two-part albumen-print panorama, image size. 156 x 450 mm, each section numbered 51 in the negative, likely backed with another sheet of albumen paper for stiffening, central portion mounted to thick card album leaf, the outer edges folded in, titled ‘Tangier’ in manuscript ink on mount

Possibly the work of A. Cavilla (active 1870s-1911), one of the earliest resident photographers in Tangier. Unlike Algeria where several of the early French photographers travelled from the 1850s onwards, Morocco was less accessible to foreign visitors, and consequently photography came to the country later than elsewhere in North Africa. Photographic firms such as James Valentine and George Washington Wilson, specialising in providing views for the armchair traveller and the tourist market, offered a few images from Morocco in their catalogues in the last quarter of the 19th century, likely made either during short trips from Gibraltar or by commissioning a local photographer to supply them. Examples are scarce.

‘With the exception of Arabia, of the countries studied in this work, extant photographs from the early years of the camera are scarcest from Morocco’ (Jacobson, Odalisques & Arabesques, p. 95 n. 79.)