André Godard (1881–1965) and Yedda Reuilly Godard (1889–1976)

In Varamin: 1930s, possibly more visits
Repository: André et Yedda Godard Archives, Département des arts de l’Islam, musée du Louvre, Paris

Curator’s preface: After this page had been designed and approved, and just before publication, the images had to be removed at the request of the Louvre. We hope that we will be able to re-add this material in the future.

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André Godard (1881–1965) was a French architect, archaeologist, and art historian (fig. 1). As the director of the Iranian Archaeological Services, Antiquities, and Museums from 1928 to 1960, he played a key role in the understanding, preservation, and promotion of Iran’s cultural heritage. His first involvement in Middle Eastern archaeology was in 1910 when he joined Henri (Henry) Viollet (1880–1955) on his third mission to Iraq, where the pair began excavating Samarra, the ninth-century capital of the Abbasids. This fieldwork was later continued and extensively documented by Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre (see his page here).

Before his time in Iran, André Godard went to Egypt and then, in 1923, he became the architect of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA), under the direction of Alfred Foucher (1865–1952). For a year, he and his wife Yedda Reuilly (1889–1976), a watercolorist and scholar who had studied at the École des langues orientales vivantes in Paris (fig. 2), traveled throughout Afghanistan (fig. 3). They made detailed notes, sketches, and photographs of Buddhist and medieval Islamic sites that had not been explored by western scholars before and surveyed the country in preparation for future fieldwork.

As the director of the Iranian Archaeological Service (Edareh-ye koll-e ʿatiqat), André was responsible for implementing restoration and preservation policies for Iranian historical monuments and archaeological sites. He was the designer and director of the National Museum in Tehran (Muzeh-ye Iran-e bastan), which was inaugurated in 1937 (figs. 4–5). Additionally, he was involved in planning the University of Tehran and played a role in establishing the Tehran Faculty of Fine Arts (1941). During his directorship, André organized large excavations in Persepolis, Esfahan, and the Lorestan region. He conducted surveys of the country to learn about its traditional architecture and helped set up a network of regional museums.

The André and Yedda Godard Archives at the Louvre Museum consist of about 13,000 photographs and 2,500 written documents, including drawings, maps, travelogues, sketchbooks, conference papers, and preparatory works for their missions. Some administrative correspondence and private documents are also included. The photographic documentation, which covers more than thirty years of activity, is extremely varied in terms of materials and techniques and includes cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate film negatives, glass plate negatives, paper positives, and color slides for projection. Among the glass plate negatives, there are more than 562 stereographs (two nearly identical photographs, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope). One of these negatives depicts the recently renovated Emamzadeh Yahya and is one of 86 photographs taken in Varamin (fig. 6; also see this film).

André took most of the photographs, but we can assume that Yedda, who often accompanied him on his travels and explorations, also took some. Given the impossibility of identifying with certainty who took any given image, it seems appropriate to attribute the photographic collection as a whole to the couple. The collection also includes a smaller group of positives likely acquired through their scientific and personal exchanges. The archives thus preserve photographs produced by Beniamino Facchinelli (1829–95), Arthur Upham Pope (1881–1969), Mohsen Moghadam (1900–88), a notable archaeologist, professor, and collector (see his Tehran house-museum), and Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten (1905–89), a close friend of the couple (see her page here), among others.

The archives include views of architecture and sites in present-day India, Central Asia, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, and especially Iran. They document some sites that no longer exist and others that have been altered by earthquakes, human pillage, and heavy restoration. The photographic documentation was also used by the Godards themselves, including in their publications on archaeology and architecture in Athār-é Īrān: Annales du Service Archéologique de l’Īrān. This journal was established at the behest of the Ministry of Public Education and the Archaeological Service of Iran and published from 1936 to 1949. The varied contributions by André and Yedda were richly illustrated with photographs of monuments, architectural drawings, reproductions of inscriptions, and photographs of objects in the newly-formed National Museum (figs. 7–8). Yedda was actively involved in organizing the museum’s collection in its early stages, as evidenced by at least one photograph (fig. 9).

Additional archives pertaining to the couple are housed in several French and foreign institutions and provide a valuable complement to those at the Louvre. A notebook and sketchbook held in the Viollet Archives at the Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations (BULAC) in Paris provide evidence of the fieldwork conducted by the two architects at Samarra in July 1910 and alternates between their two hands (inv. n. FV/C.3 and FV/C.16). The library of the Musée Guimet preserves the notebook written by André Godard during his mission in Afghanistan from 8 December 1922 to 23 November 1923 (inv. n. 58875), while the museum retains the entirety of the DAFA photographic archives, including part of the images taken by André. Harvard University holds a number of documents that the Godards gave to the Baroness Ullens de Schooten. Of particular note are ten of André’s field notebooks, one of which includes Varamin.

The archives were bequeathed to the musée du Louvre by Yedda in 1977. The photographic archive has been digitized and cataloged thanks to the generous support of Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fund through Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute.

Martina Massullo Documentaliste – Godard Archives Project

Citation: Martina Massullo, “André Godard (1881–1965) and Yedda Reuilly Godard (1889–1976).” Photographers entry in The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine, directed and edited by Keelan Overton. 33 Arches Productions, January 15, 2025. Host: Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online.