Corbis is the new exclusive rep of a collection of Egyptian imagery by Sandro Vannini, who just launched a limited-edition large-scale photography book A Secret Voyage featuring this collection. Vannini has spent the past 12 years capturing Egyptian archaeological heritage in collaboration with Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The collection of Corbis-represented photographs documents architecture, archaeology, illustration, portraiture and other visual arts. Vannini’s focus has allowed him to obtain unique to numerous restricted sites across Egypt to capture rarely seen objects, antiquities and perspectives. Notable location shots include the Valley of the Kings and tombs at Thebes, which have been exhaustively captioned by specialists.
In addition to exclusive subject matter, Vannini is somewhat famous for his painstaking technique. He combines numerous—sometimes hundreds—of images of the same subject or location into one image without otherwise altering them. While digital in nature, the process preserves the authenticity of the subject matter while offering more detail than is commonly achieved in digital photography due to size and resolution limitations.
Co-authored by Hawass and Vannini, A Secret Voyage is as ambitious as the underlying project. The book is a 400-page limited edition of 750 copies priced at £2,600 ($4,226 at today’s exchange rate).