HFB Lynch’s "Armenia: Travels and Studies" (1901) is a text regularly referenced but less often fully examined and interrogated. This lecture will discuss the processes behind the production of Lynch’s book and the events, ideas, themes and tropes that informed his vision of ‘Armenia’, with particular emphasis on photographs and image-making practice. Often the images found in travelogues are considered organic, neutral pieces of reality, yet a close examination of their construction and deployment can help us to understand the role they play in the creation of a particular image of a place. An understanding of the manner in which the lens presents human geography, natural landscape and the built environment not only allows us to comprehend a writer’s standpoint, but in Lynch’s case it also acts as an enlightening guide as we consider wider practices of ‘dreaming’ the nation in the Near East.