The Photography of the Young Lawrence of Arabia

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The young TE Lawrence was a keen photographer as a schoolboy and student and he left behind some 70 images of castles and abbeys from his cycle journeys in France in 1907 and 1908. He went to considerable effort to carry a heavy Beck camera and tripod with him on his travels.

Lawrence had a good eye and clearly enjoyed catching shapes and detail. Often he photographed the exteriors of the sites he visited, but he would also capture the patterns and shapes of interiors of the religious buildings as well. Like his letters, his photos (all black and white, of course) contributed to his research for his thesis. He would take photographs where there weren’t any good postcards.

He borrowed his father’s camera, a half-plate field camera made by Beck, and carried it with him on his journeys in 1907 (Normandy, Brittany and the Loire) and in 1908 (all over France). The camera fitted into a box about 8 inches by 8 inches by 2 1/2 inches (20 x 20 x 6cm) and concertinaed out, taking negatives onto glass plates or sheet film that were approx 5 inches by 6 1/2 inches (12 x 16 cm). He also carried a wooden tripod. The whole bulky assembly of had to be attached to his bicycle. In 1907 he carried it for some 600 miles and in 1908 around 2500 miles.

He writes about his photography occasionally in his letters, telling of spending the whole day photographing and being exhausted by it. At Chateau Gaillard “I stopped there an extra day, & did nothing but photograph, from 6.0 a.m. to 7.0 p.m. I took ten altogether, and if all are successful, I will have a wonderful series. I will certainly have to start a book. …the whole day was very hard.”

Some copies of the images he took in France are now owned by the Society of Antiquaries of London, which has kindly given permission to this website to use a handful to illustrate his journeys. See more about the Society of Antiquaries.

The castle at Gisors - in 1907 - when it was all looked up, and in 2019 when the circus was in town… See more about photographing the castle at Gisors.

TE Lawrence spent a whole day photographing Château Gaillard, which sits on a ridge above the Seine River. He took ten photographs inside the castle and another at the foot of the cliff, on the banks of the river itself. It seems as thought he layout of the land has changed in the century since he was there. See more about his photography at Château Gaillard.

He doesn’t write about the beautiful castle, in fact, just a castle keep, at Chambois, but he took a photograph of it. Read more about the castle and attempts to recreate his photograph…