Between 1859 and 1905, a number of photographers, working from the Maghreb to Turkey, collectively amassed a vast documentation of the region's landscape, towns and monuments. Gardens of Sand unites 90 original photographs, mostly hitherto unpublished, by photographers such as James Robertson, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, G. Lekegian, Antoine Beato, Felix Bonfils, Otto Shoefft, Emile Bechard and Sulayman Al-Hakim of Damascus.