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

372 Pages·16.29 MB·English

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.