Sakka (Porteur d'eau),

ca. 1870s

Operating out of Cairo, Béchard was one of many foreign-born photographers who responded to the booming demand for images of the Middle East—both among tourists and among those unable to visit the sites themselves. These photographs often satisfied viewers’ curiosity but reinforced visual stereotypes of the Near East. The sakka, or water carrier, represented a popular “type” pictured by many photography firms in Egypt in an attempt to capture the foreignness of the country through a single figure. Due to the lack of plumbing throughout much of Cairo, the water carrier’s task was to fetch water from the Nile in large goatskin sacks that would be sold in the city. In choosing this subject, Béchard emphasized the “exotic” and premodern aspects of this land and its people, conveying to customers a place seemingly unchanged by time.