{"product_id":"visions-from-abroad","title":"Visions from Abroad","description":"Arabia was certainly the most mysterious country in the world during the historical era,  an impenetrable and unknowable realm capable of stimulating the imagination and  indeed the wildest fancies of the European intellectual elite. While the Hejaz region,  where the two holy cities of Islamic Mecca and Medina are located, is still simply  off-limits to non-Moslems, the rest of this vast land was at least as inaccessible and  dangerous with its terrible deserts populated by Bedouins, whose reputation was enough  to discourage the most fearless traveller.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA small handful did, however, risk their lives to journey through Arabia and return with  the rare texts and images that form the subject of this publication. These works, or rather  the most captivating and successful of them in historical, anthropological and aesthetic  terms, are gathered together in  Visions from Abroad. Historical and Contemporary  Representations of Saudi Arabia  and presented in a dozen thematic chapters. All the media and all the genres, including painting, sculpture, engraving and  photography as well as installation and even comics, are represented in this extraordinary  gallery of images, where the works of great orientalist artists like Léon Belly, Georg  Emanuel Opiz and Émile Prisse d'Avesnes are fruitfully juxtaposed with those of  famous contemporary photographers like Raymond Depardon, Abbas and Humberto  Da Silveira.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRunning parallel to these images, the text enables us to see through Arabia,  a land so difficult and complex to penetrate and decipher, through the eyes of the  travellers who undertook to describe it in the works they have left to posterity. It also  addresses the often uncommon personalities of these figures, like the Italian Ludovico di  Varthema from Bologna, who did not hesitate to become a Mamluk in 1503 in order  to set foot on Arabian soil, and the British naval officer and writer Richard Burton, who  managed to pass himself off as an Afghan physician and magician to the same end in  1853.","brand":"Skira Editore S.p.A","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42664490991652,"sku":"9788857239460","price":130.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0725\/9734\/0196\/files\/9788857239460.jpg?v=1777357850","url":"https:\/\/thamesandhudson.com.au\/products\/visions-from-abroad","provider":"Thames \u0026 Hudson Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}