BURLINGTON — J. Brooks Buxton is an intrepid traveler and collector.
A seventh-generation Vermonter, Buxton expanded his family's holdings beyond the fine and decorative arts of the Green Mountains to the Middle East.
During his 40-year tenure in the banking and oil industries, he lived in Beirut, Lebanon; Jeddah and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Tripoli, Libya; and London, England.
The Robert Hull Fleming Museum gives a glimpse of Buxton's discerning eye in "Imagining the Islamic World: Early Travel Photography from the J. Brooks Buxton Collection."
"I decided to make it a complement to the main show, which is 'Persian Visions: Contemporary Photography from Iran,'" said Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, curator of collections and exhibitions.
"I think it's interesting to think of him as a Westerner in the Middle East. All the photography are images taken by Westerners like Brooks who were experiencing the Middle East. He collected. The photography are all 19th century with the exception of a few from the World War II era. Most are from the 1870s."
Living and traveling abroad, Buxton collected a number of the images in Paris and London. Most of the images are by French photographers unknown and known: Félix Bonfils and Jean Laurent.
Bonfils, one of the leading travel photographers of the 19th century who set up Maison Bonfils in Beirut, is the subject of a March 14 Noontime Cafe program, "Felix Bonfils and the Middle East," by Makeda Best, associate professor, University of Vermont Department of Art and Art History.
"He is a major photographer," DeGalan said.
Buxton bought the images unframed and had them framed in London.
"He (Buxton) came to United States," DeGalan said. "He was living abroad. He had residences all over the Middle East. He still maintains a residence in London. He graduated from the University of Vermont, the Class of '56. He is still an avid collector. He goes to all the auctions."
There is a richness of time and place cast by "Imagining the Islamic World," the Westerners' romanticized vantage point and historical documentation.
"A lot of the buildings have changed dramatically since the 1870s through deterioration, through war, through general time. They serve as monuments to a past place and a past time. They were really an influx of photographers becoming photographers overnight and going to the Middle East," DeGalan said.
The photographs were a saleable product as well as an enticement for others to travel to see the wondrous sights for themselves.
"There's still a market," DeGalan said. "Many of these photographers have just become major figures in 19th-century photography. They started out, jumped on board. They came into their own, and they are highly collected. A lot of artists collected them in the 19th century in France, Britain and America who did Orientalism paintings. For artists who could not afford to go there, they collected them and used them for assisting in their own paintings."
Email Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
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