Lot 64
Aramco - Saudi Arabia
Collection of press photographs, c.1955-60
Auction: 02 October 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
40 large-format gelatin silver prints, 20.5 x 25cm or the reverse, 32 of which with Aramco ink-stamp ('Please credit Arabian American Oil Company') on verso, 16 of these retaining typescript caption slip in English folded around one edge (originally tipped to verso, adhesive now perished in most cases), the remaining 8 photographs without ink-stamps but evidently by Aramco. Contents include: Aramco hardware (drill; pipes and coating machine for the trans-Arabian pipeline; stabilising plant at Dhahran); Aramco employees at work (Saudi employees filling tank car; Saudi employee operating temperature gauge); Aramco employee towns and living quarters (senior staff housing in Abqaiq; Aramco houses at Rahimah near Ras Tanura; various aerial views probably of Dhahran); Saudi townscapes and vernacular buildings (school in Hofuf; market at Hofuf; Riyadh old town; etc.); American and Saudi employee recreations (boat trip to Tarout Island; American wives shopping; swimming pool at Dhahran, etc.); portraits and posed photographs (‘Qidaith ibn Mubarak … Starting as a laborer he advances to the position of assistant driller’; 2 portraits of King Saud, comprising head and shoulders portrait facing right, with marginal caption in pen, and a portrait of Saud seated by a telephone, marked in image in pencil; a deal between an American Aramco executive and a Saudi gentleman); and several others similar. Together with 3 similar photographs: pipeline at Abqaiq (21.5 x 16.5cm, typescript caption and Keystone Pictures ink-stamp to verso); desert pipeline (21.5 x 16.5cm, Keystone pictures ink-stamp); Aramco desert convoy (18 x 22.8cm, Wide World Photo caption and ink-stamp) (43)