Le Gray (962828; from £243; www.campbellgrayhotels.com), a smaller, boutique hotel with 87 coolly minimalist, modern rooms.

An 1855 albumen print by Le Gray went to an anonymous phone bidder for $840,370 - a world record for a photograph at auction.

Another Le Gray went for $694,650.

His latest venture, Le Gray, is one of Beirut's newest and chicest hotels.

Le Gray published a treatise on photography, which went through four editions, in 1850, 1851, 1852, and 1854.

In 1855 Le Gray opened a "lavishly furnished" studio.

Le Gray went to Lebanon, then Syria where he covered the movements of the French army for a magazine in 1861.

Le Gray documented French monuments on a mission for the French government.

Le Gray was a painter who took up photography in the late 1840's, less than a decade after the introduction of the new medium.

Le Gray, as students of photography history know, was the first to capture clouds.