[Tourism promotional photographs – Kuwait].

20 photographs, 3 in colour and 17 in black and white. From 167 x 215 to 108 x 165 mm. Official photographs from the Kuwait Ministry of Information, displaying the new wealth and prosperity of the mid-20th century with a focus on schools, industry, hotels and hospitals, tourist destinations, as well as oil. Of nearly twenty photographs, 11 include official captions in English and Arabic. These include public works like gardens, low-income housing, a girls' school, and a secondary school at Shuwaikh. Others focus on culture, including a sculptor at work, excavations on Failaka Island, a church, the traditional ship-building industry, and Al-Sif Palace, "the Office of HH the Emir of Kuwait" (either Sheikh Sabah III Al-Salim Al-Sabah or Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad Al-Sabah). Another shows the refinery at Ahmadi. - Other photographs, some with notes in their margins indicating use in a printed publication, include the Ras Al-Ard Sea Club just after its founding in 1976, a banana plantation promoting Kuwaiti agriculture, and the newly constructed Kuwait Hilton and Al-Hadi Hospital. Altogether, an interesting snapshot of mid-century Kuwaiti infrastructure and public works, the face Kuwait wished to present to the world. - Some photographs with marks in margins, most with notes in Arabic on reverse; a few bumped corners and light curling, but in good condition, with no pinholes or fading.