Like many of his contemporaries, including Paul Joanovitch, Rudolf Ernst and Jean-Léon Gérôme, Deutsch made extensive use of photography to ensure archaeological accuracy in his painted renderings of local architectural features (e.g. tiles, ablaq stone work, and the traditional mashrabiyyah woodwork) in what has been described as documentary realism. This allowed him to use the Orient as inspiration, but to produce most of his paintings in his Paris studio