ebook img

The Indigenous Lens? Early Photography in the Near and Middle East PDF

372 Pages·16.29 MB·English
by  
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview The Indigenous Lens? Early Photography in the Near and Middle East

The IndIgenous Lens? earLy PhoTograPhy In The near and MIddLe easT sTudIes In Theory and hIsTory of PhoTograPhy VoL. 8 Publication series of the Center for the study in Theory and history of Photography (Tgf) at the Institute of art history at the university of Zurich edited by Bettina gockel International advisory Board Michel frizot emeritus director of research at the national Center for scientific research (Cnrs), school for advanced studies in the social sciences (ehess), Paris robin Kelsey shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, department of history of art & architecture, harvard university Wolfgang Kemp emeritus Professor of art history, Institute of art history, university of hamburg Charlotte Klonk Professor of art and new Media, Institute of art history and Visual studies, humboldt university, Berlin shelley rice arts Professor, department of Photography and Imaging and department of art history, new york university Kelley Wilder reader in Photographic history, de Montfort university, Leicester herta Wolf Professor of history and Theory of Photography, Institute of art history, university of Cologne The IndIgenous Lens? earLy PhoTograPhy In The near and MIddLe easT edITed By MarKus rITTer and sTaCI g. sCheIWILLer Printed with generous financial support from the dr. Carlo fleischmann foundation (see www.dcff.org) in Zurich, the dr. h. c. Kaspar M. fleischmann Project to support research on Photography at the Chair for the history of the fine arts, Institute of art history of the university of Zurich, and from the faculty of historical and Cultural studies, university of Vienna. IsBn 978-3-11-049135-7 e-IsBn (Pdf) 978-3-11-059087-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data a CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de © 2018 Walter de gruyter gmbh, Berlin/Boston Cover: from the series “Image of Imagination” by Bahman Jalali 2003. © rana Javadi editing of the series: Martin steinbrück Printing and Binding: dZa druckerei zu altenburg gmbh, altenburg This paper is resistant to aging (dIn/Iso 9706) Printed in germany www.degruyter.com ConTenTs 7 foreword 9 note on Transliteration 11 MarKus rITTer and sTaCI g. sCheIWILLer Introduction: early Photography in the near and Middle east and the notion of an “Indigenous Lens” hIsTorIes 29 edheM eLdeM The search for an ottoman Vernacular Photography 57 MohaMMadreZa TahMasBPour. TransLaTed By reZa sheIKh Photography during the Qajar era, 1842–1925 BIograPhIes 79 eLahe heLBIg geographies Traced and histories Told: Photographic documentation of Land and People by ʿabdollah Mirza Qajar, 1880s–1890s 111 CLaude W. suI early Photography of the holy sites of Islam in the arabian Peninsula 145 sTaCI g. sCheIWILLer relocating sevruguin: Contextualizing the Political Climate of the Iranian Photographer antoin sevruguin (c. 1851–1933) PraCTICes 173 Wendy M. K. shaW The ottoman in ottoman Photography: Producing Identity through its negation 193 CarMen PéreZ gonZáLeZ Written Images: Poems on early Iranian Portrait studio Photography (1864–1930) and Constitutional revolution Postcards (1905–1911) 221 esra aKCan The gate of the Bosporus: early Photographs of Istanbul and the dolmabahçe Palace 237 MarTIna BaLeVa The heroic Lens: Portrait Photography of ottoman Insurgents in the nineteenth-Century Balkans—Types and uses 257 sTePhen sheehI glass Plates and Kodak Cameras: arab amateur Photography in the “era of film” arChIVes 277 MohaMMad saTTarI and KhadIJeh MohaMMadI naMeghI The Photography studio of the naseri harem in nineteenth-Century Iran 291 aLIreZa naBIPour and reZa sheIKh The Photograph albums of the royal golestan Palace: a Window into the social history of Iran during the Qajar era 325 donna sTeIn how a former Museum of Modern art Curator assembled an International history of Photography Collection for Iran in the 1970s 347 Works Cited 367 List of Contributors foreWord early photography in the near and Middle east has received some scholarly and also public attention over the past years though not the amount it may deserve. The photography of these regions is often considered as a local division of nineteenth- century photography as a global phenomenon. yet “global” tends to be equated with european and north american photography, rendering “local” either a deriva- tive of them or something outside or separate. This anthology discusses local spe- cifics in early photography of the near and Middle east, which participated in global photography just as other regions did, and the notion of an “indigenous lens” in writ- ing its photo history. It appeals to insert this local photography, as well as others, into a global photo history, and makes an effort toward balancing and shifting its nar- rative. The nucleus of this anthology was an international guest lecture series at the Institute of art history at the university of Zurich, organized by Markus ritter in the winter term 2011 within “The geography of Photography” series run by the Center for studies in the Theory and history of Photography, which is directed by Bettina gockel, professor for history of fine arts at the Institute. at that time six colleagues most kindly participated in the series: Layla s. diba (new york), Carmen Pérez gonzá- lez (dusseldorf, now Wuppertal), nancy Micklewright (Washington dC), staci g. scheiwiller (Turlock), Wendy shaw (Bern, now Berlin) and Claude sui (Mannheim).1 The project of creating a collective volume based on these lectures and supple- mented by further contributions was delayed when ritter moved from Zurich to the department of art history at the university of Vienna, as professor for history of Islamic art in 2012, and soon took up additional tasks in the department. When staci g. scheiwiller, now associate professor for Modern and Contemporary art history at the California state university, stanislaus, and one of the lecturers in the initial series, stayed as Käthe Leichter Visiting Professor at the university of Vienna in the winter term 2014/15, she ventured to share the editing task. Thanks to her the number of contributions increased and the manuscript grew. Production continued until this year’s summer break allowed the finishing touches to be added in Vienna. 8 | foreWord We would like to express sincere thanks to all who helped in producing the manuscript and moving it into print. our foremost thanks go, on the one hand, to the authors who contributed to the anthology and patiently trusted in the project, and on the other, to Bettina gockel who proposed and continuously supported the pro- ject. she also accepted the anthology for publication in the book series “studies in Theory and history of Photography” edited by her, after the International advisory Board had provided a fruitful criticism of the book project and approved the final anthology. We are most grateful to the dr. Carlo fleischmann stiftung and to dr. h.c. Kaspar M. fleischmann (Zurich) for funding the publication. The faculty of historical and Cultural studies at the university of Vienna provided assistance for copyediting. sarah Teetor (Vienna) checked the english language of texts. Patience is the word again when thanking the publisher de gruyter (akademie Verlag) and Martin stein- brück, Kerstin Protz, anja Weisenseel and Katja richter for their concerted efforts of turning the manuscript into a beautiful book. The two editors have different academic, disciplinary, and methodological back- grounds within art history, but they share an interest in nineteenth-century photo- graphy in Iran, which goes back to their doctoral theses, viewing photographs in one case as a visual document of art in Qajar Iran, in the other case as a source of photo art in contemporary Iran. The lecture series in Zurich had employed a beautiful photo artwork by the late Iranian photographer Bahman Jalali (1944–2010) from his “Image of Imagination” series (2000–2008) in order to advertise the program. Jalali was also a photo historian and collector of early photography, and in the series he utilized magnified details from early photographs (fig. 3 on p. 24).2 We have used this image again on the cover of this anthology, because it can signify a contemporary concern of artists and societies of the near and Middle east with early photography, perceived as artistic and visual historic heritage, and a contribution to art in general. While such artworks may be seen as a visual comment on photo history, this anthol- ogy provides a written one. Vienna and Turlock, october 2017 noTes 1 see the program at: <http://www.khist.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ffffffff-e440-edf6-0000-000018- b629b9/gop_2011.pdf> (last access July 17, 2017). Layla diba’s lecture was already planned to be published separately: diba 2013. 2 see in the “Introduction” of the present volume, pp. 23–24. noTe on TransLITeraTIon due to the diversity of essays, the editors have attempted to keep transliteration simple yet reflective of the respective languages. for arabic and Persian, the signs for the letters hamza and ʿayn were retained but not for ottoman Turkish. Likewise, dif- ferent spellings for similar words were used according to language and to pronunci- ation, such as “Muhammad” in arabic but “Mohammad” in Persian. Long vowels are not indicated by diacritics. Words that have entered the english language are spelled without transliteration.

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.