Powerful Images

Front Cover The New Galata Bridge, Sébah & Joaillier, 25 May 1912, Ömer M. Koç Collection.

From its birth in 1839, photography has participated in modernity as much as it has symbolized it. Its capacity to record and display, and its claim to accuracy and truth intricately linked the new technology to the dynamism of the modern world. The Ottoman Empire embraced photography with great enthusiasm. The impact and meaning of photography were further reinforced by the thrust of modernization and Westernization of the Tanzimat movement. By the turn of the century, photography in the Ottoman lands had become a standard feature of everyday life, public media, and the state apparatus.

The visual world we live in today was born some 150 years ago. Camera Ottomana is both a homage to, and a critical assessment of, the local dimension of one of the most potent and transformative technological inventions of the recent past.

Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1914 Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1914

This exhibition explores some of the most striking aspects of the close connection between photography and modernity in the specificity of the Ottoman Empire. Much of the material concerns the display of modernity through photography, as was so often the case in the photographs and albums commissioned by the sultans to showcase the empire for Western audiences. Nevertheless, modernity was often embedded in the photographic act, transforming it into a common and mundane practice. Be it in the form of images disseminated through the illustrated press, postcards sent out to family members or anonymous collectors, portraits presented to friends and acquaintances, or pictures taken of employees and convicts, photography had started to invade practically every sphere of public and private life.

75 TL

Edited by Zeynep Çelik Edhem Eldem

Texts by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, Bahattin Öztuncay, Frances Terpak & Peter Louis Bonfitto

Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1914


Camera Ottomana

Copyright 2015 by Koç University Publications, Istanbul. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, including any illustrations still in copyright (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), in any form without written permission from the publishers and the relevant copyright holders.

This book has been published on the occasion of the exhibition “Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914,” at Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul, April 21-August 19, 2015. A Turkish edition appears under the title Camera Ottomana: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Fotoğraf ve Modernite, 1840-1914.

Project Manager Buket Coşkuner

© Koç University Press, 2015 - Certificate No 18318 1st Edition: Istanbul, April 2015

Project Coordinators Ebru Esra Satıcı, Şeyda Çetin

Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) İstiklal Caddesi No.181 Merkez Han 34433 Beyoğlu İstanbul www.rcac.ku.edu.tr

Project Editor Betül Kadıoğlu Translation Hande Eagle (The Origins and Development of Photography in Istanbul) Copy-Editor Karen Zahorchak (Album) Photographs By Murat Akar, Hadiye Cangökçe Book Design Işıl Ünal, Oya Çitçi - PATTU, www.pattu.net Printed in Turkey by Ofset Yapımevi - Certificate No 12326 Çağlayan Mahallesi Şair Sokak No.4 Kâğıthane/İstanbul T. + 90 212 295 8601

On the cover Inauguration of the New Galata Bridge, Sébah & Joaillier, 25 May 1912, Ömer M. Koç Collection.

Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları İstiklal Caddesi No.181 Merkez Han 34433 Beyoğlu İstanbul T. + 90 212 393 6070 Koç University Suna Kıraç Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data Camera Ottomana : photography and modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914, at Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul, April 21-August 19, 2015 / Edited By Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem; translation Hande Eagle; photographs by Murat Akar, Hadiye Cangökçe. 256 pages ; 17x24cm. Typeface : Arnhem Pro, ITC Officina Pro Paper : Munken Lynx 300 g/m2, Munken Lynx 100 g/m2 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-605-5250-46-1 1. Turkey--History--Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918--Pictorial works. 2. Photography-Turkey--History--19th century. 3. Turkey--Civilization--Pictorial works. I. Çelik, Zeynep. II. Eldem, Edhem. III. Eagle, Hande. IV. Akar, Murat. V. Cangökçe, Hadiye. DR417.2.C36 2015

Camera Ottomana

Welders, workers, and engineers posing at the new Galata Bridge assembly site on the Golden Horn. Sébah & Joaillier, 21 March 1911. ÖMKC.

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Note on Spelling, Transliteration, and Dates

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Acknowledgments

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Introduction

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Frances Terpak & Peter Bonfitto Transferring Antiquity to Ink - Ruins from the Americas to Asia Minor and the Development of Photolithography

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Bahattin Öztuncay The Origins and Development of Photography in Istanbul

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Edhem Eldem Powerful Images - The Dissemination and Impact of Photography in the Ottoman Empire, 1870–1914

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Zeynep Çelik Photographing Mundane Modernity

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Album Political Change Abdülhamid as Paterfamilias Ottoman Exoticism Bookish Portraits Amateur Photographers Bad Boys Formal Order Photography at the Service of Art Foreign Dignitaries in the Empire A Taste for Folklore Appropriating Antiquities Orientalist Reality Serving Science and Scholarship Personalized Photo Cards Abidin the Snitch Private Albums, Public Spaces Forbidden Kitsch Unity in Diversity

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Contributors

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Bibliography

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Index

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Note on Spelling, Transliteration, and Dates

Acknowledgments

As there is no ideal solution to the recurring problem caused by the linguistic complexity of Ottoman culture, we have chosen to limit ourselves to a few principles and rules of thumb that are likely to provide a certain degree of consistency. For those words which have entered the English language, such as “pasha” or “agha”, we have used the standard English spelling. The same principle was applied to place names, such as Cairo, Beirut, or Izmir without a dot on the “I.” In the case of some cities, such as Constantinople/Istanbul or Salonica/Thessaloniki, the choice of one toponym over the other may have been dictated by the historical context.

Camera Ottomana is made possible by the contribution of many individuals. We are indebted to Buket Coşkuner, Manager of RCAC, for her gracious and rigorous leadership and to the meticulous, diligent, and extremely hard-working duo at the RCAC, Şeyda Çetin and Ebru Esra Satıcı for their invaluable research help. We also benefited from Ceyda Yüksel's input during this process. Betül Kadıoğlu ably coordinated the work and corrected our oversights and errors. Ayşen Gür and Hande Eagle expertly translated the texts from English and Turkish, respectively, along the way continuing the editorial mission. The elegant design belongs to the superbly talented Işıl Ünal, Cem Kozar and Oya Çitçi of PATTU. Together with the authors and curators, this remarkable crew formed a tight team. We thank every one of them for making the production process smooth and fun.

Words and expressions in Ottoman Turkish have been transliterated using the modern Turkish alphabet without the detailed diacritics used in philological works; nevertheless, we remained as close as possible to the Ottoman spelling, especially with respect to words and names ending in "b" and "d." The Ottoman dating system is based on the Hegira, corresponding to 622 CE. However, two different calendars were used, lunar and solar, sometimes simultaneously. As we have systematically converted these dates to the Western (Gregorian) calendar, some documents or publications are referenced with up to three different dates. Risks of confusion can be reduced by remembering that a difference of approximately 600 years clearly distinguishes Christian and Muslim years, and that the Muslim lunar calendar is characterized by Arabic month names, while the solar months are named like in the West. E.g. 9 Şaban 1293 = 18 August 1292 = 30 August 1876.

We acknowledge with gratitude several institutions, which allowed us to use their collections and documentation: Istanbul University Central Library, the Prime Ministry Ottoman State Archives, SALT Research, the Royal Collection and the Royal Archives. We would also like to thank Fostin Cotchen, Cengiz Kahraman and Sinan Kuneralp for their precious support in providing us with crucially important material. The majority of the documents come from Ömer M. Koç’s legendary collection, which he has generously accepted to share with us. Our special thanks go to him for making the book and the exhibition that accompanied it possible. We are grateful to Frances Terpak and Peter Bonfitto for working with us and sharing their rich expertise in this challenging field. Bahattin Öztuncay’s contribution was on many levels: as an author, as a cocurator, but also as the deep repository of knowledge on Ottoman photography. He has our profound appreciation and wholehearted thanks. Finally, we would like to thank our spouses, Sedef Eldem and Perry Winston, who, as always, put a lot of quiet work into our endeavors. Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem

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POWERFUL IMAGES The Dissemination and Impact of Photography in the Ottoman Empire, 1870–1914

The other day I had to go to Taksim on some business. As I came across two or three illustrated boards hanging against the wall of a building on Pera Avenue and as I like to observe such images, I stopped for a moment and started examining them. One of these was a scene from the interior of the holy mosque of Hagia Sophia. I very much enjoyed viewing it. Unfortunately, however, I lost all my initial pleasure when I saw the other. This panel consisted of smaller frames, like in an album. It held a multitude of portraits, from Mevlevi sheiks down to ice cream and pudding vendors. Let us accept these, but what should we say of the images of ladies wearing their veils and cloaks? And if we are to accept these, too, what about Muslim ladies without their cloaks and veils? . . . I would be lying if I said that this situation did not hurt my piety as a Muslim and my patriotism as an Ottoman. As I was standing there, not knowing what to say or do, an officer, who by the looks of it seemed freshly out of the Military Academy, came by and shared my astonishment. Seeing that we were of the same mind, I said: – My friend, one cannot tell women not to have their picture taken, but if they have to, would it not be better if, once a sufficient number of copies were made from the glass plate they call a cliché, they had it erased? As I said this, another man with the looks of a clerk overheard my words to the officer, and jumped into the conversation: – My dear, what you propose used to be done ten years ago, and in those days women would have their pictures taken by female photographers. The world has changed today. The ladies walk into a photographer’s studio and throw off their cloak to have their picture taken. What use would it be to have the glass plates erased or broken?

Edhem Eldem

Let me first of all warn you that I do not claim that our women should maintain their present way of covering themselves. However, considering that our present rules of conduct require that they dress in a certain way and that it is deemed inappropriate for our women to show themselves to men, as long as this remains so, I find it pure shamelessness that our ladies should go to Pera and have their pictures taken among Greek and Polish philanderers, and then have these pictures displayed on street corners!

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This is what I say, but as to the sorrow caused by this, I cannot just say, “May God discipline them!” I submit this situation to the attention of those who have the piety of a Muslim and the patriotism of an Ottoman, and suggest that a solution be found to put a stop to this evil as a matter of national honor.1 It was in these terms that in 1871 the owner and editor of the daily Basiret, “Basiretçi” Ali Efendi, recounted his indignation at the sight of what must have been the window of a photographer’s studio on Pera Avenue in the European district of Istanbul. His description of the shameless display of photographs of Muslim women indicates what photographers’ advertising looked like at this early date. It also shows how the latest technological changes had led to a proliferation of the photographic image, rendered much more accessible thanks to the collodion process and albumen printing. More importantly, his description formed an accurate inventory of the three major photographic genres of the time: portraits, types, and landscapes or monuments. He considered this last the least problematic, expressing admiration for the large image of the interior of Hagia Sophia. He had less sympathy for what was evidently a series of “Oriental types,” popular with foreign visitors who wanted to take home the photograph of a shoeshine or a whirling dervish. Both these genres had origins in a long tradition of paintings, drawings, and prints depicting views, types, and costumes of the Levant. By the 1870s they constituted a major source of revenue for photograph studios, especially before the massive irruption of the postcard some two decades later (1, 2). Yet it was with one of the most basic genres, the portrait, that Ali Efendi had a serious problem. The thought of all these Muslim women posing in front of the camera and then being displayed in a shop window was more than he could bear. Basiretçi Ali Efendi touched upon a tension between the private nature of the photographic portrait and its public display. Yet his focus was exclusively on women—more precisely, on Muslim women; his concern for privacy was therefore limited to the Islamic concept of mahrem (intimacy or privacy), which stood between an honest Muslim woman and the gaze of unauthorized men. The patronizing use of possessive formulae such as “our women” or “our ladies” further enhanced this patriarchal vision of segregation. To Ali Efendi, that window display was in open defiance of the moral order imposed by Islamic custom and tradition. Yet a closer look at his recriminations reveals a number of inconsistencies and weaknesses. To begin with, the audience of the photographer’s decorative arrangement seems not to have been Greek and Polish Casanovas, but three Muslims, including himself. More importantly, Ali Efendi may have assessed the photographs on display inaccurately. At the time, portraits of Ottoman Muslim women were a rarity, especially authentic portraits, as opposed to staged photographs.2 Indeed, if a woman was portrayed without the characteristic veil and garments of a Muslim lady, what allowed him to identify her as such? The photographs he assumed to be portraits of Muslim women were in fact part of the ethnographic series he had found more tolerable. Just as nineteenth-century tourists could take home souvenir photographs of street peddlers or mendicant dervishes, they were also

1 Mevlevi dervishes, photograph by Pascal Sébah, ca. 1870. ÖMKC.

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2 “Mahallebi vendor,” photograph by Pascal Sébah, ca. 1870. Fostin Cotchen Collection, New York. 3 Turkish lady, photograph by Pascal Sébah, ca. 1870. ÖMKC.

invited to peer into the intimate life of Ottoman subjects through domestic scenes—especially portraits of women. Combining gender with ethnography, these portraits often followed a religious or ethnic taxonomy: Christians, Jews, Gypsies, Arabs, and, most mysterious of all, Muslims. The stock term for these was dame turque, Turkish lady, a phrase that came to describe a generic image of a woman in Oriental garb, generally with the lower half of her face barely hidden by a light gauze, reclining on a plush sofa with a water pipe nearby. Pascal Sébah (whose studio in Pera was most likely the one that attracted Ali Efendi’s attentive gaze) specialized in such compositions, which completed his rich inventory of Oriental scenes.3 In all likelihood, what Ali Efendi saw were staged studio photographs where paid actresses— local non-Muslims—impersonated veiled women and harem inmates for the enjoyment of unsuspecting foreigners (3).4 Had Ali Efendi naively fallen into the same Orientalist trap as the average European tourist? Perhaps he was making a claim unlikely to be checked by his readers to warn against the possible consequences of recent developments in photography. Moreover, to a good Muslim the real identities of the ladies in the photographs may have been less important than who they appeared to be. Photographs of allegedly Muslim women were being printed in growing numbers and displayed and sold freely in shops in the European neighborhood of the city; this was disturbing enough to warrant an attempt to put a stop to the perceived abuse. Indeed, mightn’t these fantasies be turned into reality if honest Muslim women were thereby encouraged to engage in such outrageous behavior? For those few who may have thought progress and modernity heralded a relaxation of moral codes, Ali Efendi’s editorial was a timely warning.

Archival documentation suggests that the major concern was about the circulation of images purporting to represent Muslim women in the intimacy of the harem rather than about actual Muslim women frequenting the studios of the city. As postcards proliferated, attempts to ban such practices increased over time, fueled by the almost obsessive desire of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) to control and censor all printed material. More often than not, these prohibitions also covered an Ottoman taboo against images considered sacrilegious, generally due to the presence of sacred buildings or Islamic references. These restrictions had hardly any impact, as most of the material circulated through foreign post offices over which the Ottoman authorities had little jurisdiction.5 This was not just a matter of morality in a time of change. Underlying the anxiety was the phenomenal development and propagation of the photographic image; the spread of this new medium raised other concerns too. The issue was primarily quantitative rather than qualitative: the images that had been confined to a much more limited use were increasingly available and accessible. After all, there was no real novelty in the desire to feed the Western public’s appetite for images of the Orient ranging from exotic to erotic; what was new was the extraordinary way in which these images could now circulate, thanks to the new medium of photography and its derivatives, from the illustrated press to the ubiquitous postcard. It would be a mistake, however, to view this as a one-sided phenomenon dominated and eventually manipulated by the West, with the Ottomans as the object of the photographic gaze, only occasionally trying to limit, as Ali Efendi wished to do, its nefarious impact. The situation was much more ambiguous; for example, Ali Efendi’s enthusiasm for the photograph of the interior of Hagia Sophia suggests that he had no objection to that image

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being disseminated abroad and around the Ottoman Empire. Yet even with respect to the touchy issue of representing women, the Ottoman government of the time had a more lenient attitude than Basiret’s editorialist. In fact, it embraced and appropriated the new technique to promote the image of the empire in the international arena. The best example of this new trend is Costumes populaires de la Turquie, an album of photographic plates with commentary describing the great variety of regional costume found throughout the Ottoman domains. The publication was prepared for the 1873 Universal Exposition in Vienna, and has been studied in depth. 6 It was the perfect embodiment of a state-sponsored initiative to use this new medium in order to provide Western audiences with a controlled discourse about Oriental customs and costume.7 In a sense, this was an official version of the photographer’s shop window, but it was a tamed one, from which Orientalist fantasy and staging had been removed in order to make way for a stern ethnographic gaze. Muslim women were there, some even unveiled; they may still have been non-Muslim actresses, but the suggestive and lascivious poses of imaginary harem inmates had been replaced by the composed attitude of men and women standing in front of the bland, endlessly repeated wood paneling of an empty and austere room. There is probably no better example of this shift than the striking contrast between two photographs by Pascal Sébah. One is a Sébah studio composition, the other a plate in Costumes populaires. Not only were the two images taken by the same photographer, but they show the same three models posing with very similar, if not identical, garments. The difference is all in the pose and attitude (4, 5). Costumes populaires was published under Abdülaziz, while the vast majority of the censorship directed against certain types of images dates to the reign of his successor, Abdülhamid II. Yet Abdülhamid was not an iconoclast. On the contrary, he was obsessively engaged in a photographic census of his domains and was fully aware of the use that could be made of such material to promote a certain image of the empire. Particularly important in this respect were two enormous and almost identical series of some fifty albums containing about 1,800 photographs; one set was presented to the Library of Congress in 1893, the other to the British Museum in 1894. Also significant was a documentary core of about 500 albums with over 33,000 photographs, once preserved at Yıldız Palace and now at the Istanbul University Central Library.8 The American Congressman Samuel Sullivan Cox may have encouraged Abdülhamid in this direction by presenting him with the Tenth US Census, but the Sultan’s photomania seems to have started well before he received Cox’s gift.9 As Ahmed Hamdi Pasha (1826–1885), governor of Syria, wrote to the Grand Vizier on 15 February 1884: As it is clear that His Majesty our Lord Benefactor, well aware of all truths, possesses perfect knowledge of every circumstance in His Well-Protected Imperial Domains, it would be advantageous and useful and would merit His august approbation that photographic images be made of a number of antiquities which are found in the province of

Syria and which great numbers of people from Europe are keen to observe and examine by choosing to go through much discomfort in their travels, and that they be kept in the splendid palace of His Majesty the Caliph as an index of His Imperial Majesty’s productive knowledge; thus one hundred photographic plates of Baalbek, of Mount Hauran, of Jerash, of Palmyra, of antiquities and of some famed buildings of the Land of Palestine, and of certain towns well-known to the Europeans, such as Jerusalem and Nazareth, and of towns on the shores of Syria have been placed in a case and entrusted to Selim, a sergeant of the Beirut gendarmerie, together with a list of their numbers and names.10 The Pasha’s repeated mention of the Sultan’s knowledge, and his reference to an index (fihrist) show that the idea of collecting images as a comprehensive survey of the lands—a sort of panopticon of the empire—was well-established and understood by the palace administration. This document also reveals a dominant concern for places and objects of interest to Western visitors. The Western gaze acted as a guide for the creation of image collections. However, this was not devoid of ambiguity and contradictions. On the one hand, Western curiosity was most aroused by what were perceived as Orientalist or exotic elements in the Ottoman Empire, from antiquities to costume to architecture. But from an Ottoman perspective, what mattered most was to show to Western detractors that the empire was modernizing rapidly and inexorably. No wonder, then, that the albums sent to Washington and London were a strange mix of images bonnes pour l’Occident—the views appreciated by tourists—and representations of progress—schools and students, hospitals and patients, barracks and troops. Upon receiving the albums in London, the Times dutifully reported that these “gifts show the great progress which has been made of late years in Turkey under his Majesty’s auspices.”11 In many ways, Abdülhamid’s albums were in line with the Ottoman desire to impress Western audiences with whatever they were willing to accept as a positive image of the empire. Much had already been achieved through the pageantry of the universal expositions, yet those efforts had largely been dominated by norms and themes chosen and determined by the West.12 The Vienna Universal Exposition of 1873 indicated a gradual change in this tendency, as the Ottomans took more active control, and produced a number of publications of a more scientific nature.13 Abdülhamid’s gift albums did form a sort of sequel to earlier Ottoman exhibits and publications at the world’s fairs, with the additional advantage of including views of modernized Ottoman infrastructure that could hardly have been displayed abroad. The decision to resort to the new format of the photograph album may have been spurred by a long period of about two decades following the Vienna fair, during which the empire failed to participate in any such event.14 The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago may have been a catalyst for the constitution of the photograph series, as a documentary parallel to the Ottoman exhibitions themselves. Yet there was a major difference between international exhibitions and publications, on the one hand, and a set of fifty albums sent to foreign libraries, on the other. While the expositions and accompanying publications could count on a massive number of visitors

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4, 5 Arabs from the vicinity of Mecca, Pascal Sébah, ca. 1872. Fostin Cotchen Collection, New York; Kabyle man and woman from Harb, near Medina and woman from Jiyaddala, near Mecca, Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, part 3, pl. XL. Both images are by Pascal Sébah and use the same models and almost identical garments, but they are radically different in their treatment of the subject.

and readers, the albums failed to reach a significant audience. Between their presentation in 1893–1894 and their rediscovery in the early 1980s, they were completely forgotten, never serving the purpose they had apparently been designed for.15 Such utter failure needs to be taken into account when studying these collections; and the same is probably true of the 33,000 photographs amassed at Yıldız Palace around the same time. Although the image of a secluded ruler viewing his empire through the proxy of the photographer’s lens has appealed to scholars working on Abdülhamid, it is doubtful that he made use of this collection on a regular or systematic basis.16 In all likelihood, the project was started with enthusiasm and curiosity and then gradually sank into a routine that produced a vast accumulation of documentation, exceeding any manageable size. The Washington and London album series

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were a mere sample of this hodgepodge, albeit somewhat more structured and ordered and more focused in scope. Those thirty thousand images include pages and pages of repetitive shots of students posing before a calligraphic panel reading “Long live the Sultan” (Padişahım çok yaşa); facade after facade of similar looking schools, barracks, and hospitals; and endless displays of ammunition and firearms. To browse through these would have been a monotonous chore, which the occasional views of the Bosphorus, of mosques, or of the Sultan’s horses and yachts would have barely enlivened.

DANGEROUS IMAGES Was this a miscalculation on Abdülhamid’s part, or did the British and American public simply lack interest in the subject? The project’s failure was mostly due to the fact that it was not really planned thoroughly. Abdülhamid had an ambivalent view of photographs. Eager to use them as a showcase of progress and stability, he was also wary of seeing them get out of hand through uncontrolled distribution. This may have led him to believe rather naively that a carefully staged presentation of handpicked images would eventually reach its audience— much as he had himself been fascinated by images of firearms and Native Americans.17 Indeed, some images were not to be circulated at all, starting with his own portrait. Since the reigns of Selim III and especially Mahmud II, Ottoman sultans had enjoyed having their portrait made and displayed in various ways and places as a sign of majesty and authority. Abdülhamid II put an end to that tradition by banning, or at least restricting, the use of his own likeness in any format.18 The paradox of a sovereign obsessed with collecting photographs of his subjects and lands but unwilling to let his own portrait be taken is a trademark of Abdülhamid. Indeed, when the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908 put an end to his autocratic regime and forced him into the role of a constitutional monarch, his first public appearance was published in the weekly L’Illustration as a photograph of “the man who had never been photographed before.” 19 This was considered so exceptional that the magazine’s following issue carried the aging Sultan’s photograph on its front cover (6).20 Of course, this was not strictly true; there were photographs of him, but they seem all to date from before his accession to the throne and they were only very rarely published or displayed. One of the consequences of this policy was the systematic recycling of the sovereign’s older photographs. Among these, two seem to have been particularly useful. One is an austere pose taken by Abdullah Frères in 1869, which L’Illustration used on its cover the week following Abdülhamid’s accession to the throne in 1876. The other, even older, had been taken in London in 1867, during Abdülaziz’s European tour, by the famed photographers William and Daniel Downey. The advantage of this portrait was that the twenty-five-year-old prince did not look quite young, and that he was wearing his full regalia. Since as Sultan he was pretty much invisible, it was easy to make use of these timeless images, even thirty years after they were taken, as on the colorful cover of the French Petit journal in 1897 (7, 8, 9, 10).21 Ironically, Abdülhamid’s iconographic parsimony only encouraged the press to find creative ways of making up for the dearth of images. If the Petit journal in 1897 simply used an outdated portrait, erasing thirty years from the ruler’s age, L’Illustration was more inventive: the following year it published a cover drawing based on the old photograph, adding legs to the bust to create an image of Abdülhamid taking the German emperor Wilhelm II by the arm, set

6 Abdülhamid, L’Illustration, no. 3417, 22 August 1908. EE.

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7 Prince Abdülhamid, photograph by Abdullah Frères, 1869. ÖMKC. 8 The same portrait of Abdülhamid used on the cover of L’Illustration, no. 1750, 9 September 1876. EE. The position of the arm seems to have been changed in order to avoid the monotonous pose of hanging arms in the original image. 9 Prince Abdülhamid, photograph by W. & D. Downey, London, 1867. ÖMKC. 10 The same portrait used on the cover of Le Petit journal, no. 327, 21 February 1897. EE. 11 “A Pair of Friends,” Abdülhamid and Wilhelm II, cover of L’Illustration, no. 2904, 22 October 1898. EE. 12 “End of a Reign,” Abdülhamid’s fall on 27 April 1909, cover of L’Illustration, no. 3454, 8 May 1909. EE.

over the sarcastic caption, “A Pair of Friends”—a reference to the rapprochement between Germany and the Ottoman Empire (11).22 There was certainly some irony—even poetic justice—in the fact that Abdülhamid, by restricting the use of his image, inadvertently unleashed the power of a much more versatile and creative medium. When he finally fell from power in 1909, the cover of L’Illustration depicted the dethroned autocrat in a drawing stooped and gaunt, with the caption “End of a Reign.” The sketch is a free interpretation of the description provided by a member of the committee sent to depose him, which is printed alongside: “He was dressed in civilian garb, with a carelessness that betrayed his haste and agitation. His hands trembled a bit; his shoulders, more hunched than usually, gave him a humble air . . . “(12).23 Although he never stated his reasons for prohibiting use of his photograph, Abdülhamid II probably considered his portrait to be a private matter and was reluctant to share it with the public. In doing so he was renouncing a key instrument of the public image and prestige of a ruler: the imperial portrait.24 But if Abdülhamid withdrew his likeness from public space, he did not altogether abandon the opportunity to mark the media with his presence, albeit in more abstract forms. He made extensive use of the tuğra—the

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Sultan’s cipher—and around 1883 he invented and standardized an Ottoman coat of arms. These easily made up the iconographic deficit. Both the tuğra and the coat of arms grew into a ubiquitous symbol of Hamidian power in a wide variety of media, amply demonstrating the sultan’s ability to conquer visual space.25

below, a detailed caption provides a multilayered context to this ghastly image: “What goes on 40 hours from Paris. At the photographer’s: Turkish gendarmes and their trophies— Reproduction of one of the numerous photographs displayed in bookshops in Salonica and Monastir.”28

Conquest—and if conquest was not possible, control—of visual space was of crucial importance to Abdülhamid. His obsession with his own portrait constituted just one aspect of this issue; another was his anxiety to prevent the propagation of sacrilegious images through postcards and books. At the center of this struggle was the press, particularly the illustrated press, which combined the formidable power of the word and the image. In discussions of his albums, Abdülhamid is credited with having repeatedly claimed that images were much more powerful than words and that they all conveyed messages.26 The source for this quote is an indirect one: his first secretary, Tahsin Pasha, mentions it in his Yıldız memoirs, published in the 1930s. There is no reason to doubt its authenticity; the popular saying that “an image is worth a thousand words” had particular currency in the era when photography became a popular mass medium. But this anecdote should be reframed in its proper context, as given by Tahsin Pasha:

The image accompanied a long article by Albert Malet, a French historian known for his successful school textbooks, on a major uprising throughout Macedonia (13). Malet referred to the cover image only in passing, while describing the violence unleashed by revolutionaries and Ottoman troops in the area: “In Monastir, one could buy photographs depicting Turkish gendarmes, wearing almost clean uniforms borrowed from God knows where for the occasion, displaying themselves triumphantly around a table laden with horribly mutilated heads.”29 The message was clear and meant to be shocking. At a distance of only forty hours from civilization, barbarism had reached such a degree of banality that it had become a curiosity item, on display in shops.

The Sultan was very interested in [the illustrated press]. He always followed and examined those magazines which he received by subscription, and sometimes had the interpreters translate their contents. I heard him so many times repeat these same words: “Every picture is an idea. An image inspires political and emotional meanings which cannot be expressed by a text of a hundred pages. That is why I profit more from their pictures than from their written contents.”27 These words follow a passage in which the Pasha describes the Sultan’s very modest working quarters at Yıldız, consisting of a study with a table covered with “the weekly and monthly illustrated magazines published in the major cities of Europe.” These were the images that Abdülhamid considered more powerful than the articles that accompanied them. If illustrated magazines like L’Illustration and Le Petit journal were free to stage the Sultan with doctored illustrations, that was just the tip of the iceberg. These kinds of images could become much more disturbing by touching upon highly sensitive issues. Some photographs, engravings, and commentary in the illustrated press could convey extremely negative impressions of the empire, a fact that Abdülhamid perceived as a threat to the very foundations of the regime he was trying to maintain throughout his dominions. Perhaps one of the best illustrations of how threatening the illustrated press could become is the sudden and massive irruption of images of “severed heads” in Western illustrated newspapers and journals in 1903. The most striking example was the cover of the 28 February 1903 issue of L’Illustration, the flagship of the French illustrated press and the best-known magazine throughout the empire. It featured a large engraving, evidently taken from a photograph, depicting a group of six men in fezzes and some kind of uniform. They stand, rifles raised, confronting the camera. The focal point of the image is a pedestal on which are gorily displayed three severed heads. The upper title announces “The Events in Macedonia”;

Understandably, the publication of this image came as a shock to the Ottoman administration.30 On 10 March 1903, Abdülhamid’s first secretary, Tahsin Pasha, wrote to the Inspectorate of the Provinces of Rumelia, asking for an investigation into the matter: We have sent to Your Excellency an issue of the newspaper Illustration printed and published in Paris and containing a picture titled the Events in Macedonia. Although we are informed that the said picture is a fabrication and a setup, based on the information submitted that some photographs of this kind had previously been on sale in bookstores of Salonica and Monastir, if such pictures are indeed being sold in bookshops around there, it is ordered and commanded by august decree of His Majesty the Caliph that this should be prevented and that the truth about the matter be exposed and submitted.31 The phenomenon was not limited to L’Illustration. Just a day earlier, a second-rank illustrated magazine, La Vie illustrée, had published the same image on its cover, but using the original photograph. La Vie illustrée had topped L’Illustration by providing two other gory pictures in the same style (14, 15). These are titled and captioned much more aggressively, with a personalized accusation against Abdülhamid: “Officers, noncommissioned officers, soldiers, and gendarmes of H. M. Abdul-Hamid having their photograph taken with the heads of their tortured victims” and “The Turkish Atrocities in Macedonia—the ‘Vainglory’ of Murder.”32 Soon enough, the Hamidian administration was confronted with another instance of the same terrible publicity, this time in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung of 15 March 1903.33 The German publication was about two weeks late, and at least the severed heads had not made it to the front cover (16). The article was similar to the French, referring to “Macedonian atrocities,” and describing the way Turkish soldiers had carried the heads of their victims in sacks to the closest photographer, “where they could be displayed and recorded as decorative objects and as the bloody evidence of their bestiality.”34 There were probably other examples throughout Europe; the governor of Edirne reported the publication of several such images

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13 “What goes on 40 hours from Paris,” cover of L’Illustration, no. 3131, 28 February 1903. EE.

14, 15 (page 124) “The Turkish atrocities in Macedonia—facing the camera. A group of Turkish soldiers pose for the photographer, with the heads of their victims”; “The Turkish Atrocities in Macedonia—the ‘Vainglory’ of Murder. Officers, noncommissioned officers,

soldiers, and gendarmes of H. M. Abdülhamid having their photograph taken with the heads of their tortured victims”; cover and page 335 of La Vie illustrée, no. 228, 27 February 1903. EE.

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in St. Petersburg’s Novoye Vremya.35 In 1904 Albert Malet included one of these photographs in his recollections of travels in Macedonia in September 1902, published in Le Tour du monde.36 That same year, a book published in the United States by two Bulgarians on the Macedonian problem used one such photograph on the cover and as a frontispiece.37 The political power that these images meant to unleash is particularly evident in the text accompanying the images in La Vie illustrée. Signed by Henri de Weindel, chief editor, the article is a violent diatribe against Abdülhamid, blaming him for the atrocities committed against the civilian population of Macedonia by his troops. After describing in great detail scenes of violence and torture, de Weindel refers to the images as the irrefutable evidence of these crimes: And here are the documents: we are not producing narratives, we are not producing anecdotes, we are not producing literary descriptions, we are bringing photographs. And truly, the view they offer the eyes is worth more than all the descriptions in the world, for the Sublime Porte cannot contest their authenticity, since a photographic plate cannot lie. These photographs were taken between September and December 1902, and once they were informed of their existence, the

16 “Macedonian Atrocities. Turkish Rule by Horror. Turkish soldiers at the photographer’s, posing with the heads of

their victims,” Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung 12, no. 11, 15 March 1903, page 163. EE.

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Sultan’s police had all the images destroyed—not soon enough, however, for a very small number of proofs escaped destruction. How many are circulating in the world? Five or six, ten at most. We have managed, with the greatest difficulty, to acquire a collection of these, the most typical of which we have reproduced here.38 De Weindel’s rhetoric fully embraced the vision of photography as truth, so typical of those years when photojournalism was developing at remarkable speed. Notably, de Weindel’s claim that the images were “worth more than all the descriptions in the world” concurred with Abdülhamid’s own reported opinion. Indeed, Ottoman records indicate that the government began to hunt for compromising images on 28 February 1903, just one day after the publication of La Vie illustrée and the very day on which L’Illustration came out. Yet the first references to these magazines did not appear in the archives until ten days later. This means that the starting point for Ottoman action was not the publication of the images, but a dispatch from the palace following information received that “some Macedonian criminals have attempted to exhibit photographs of the severed heads of Bulgarian bandits placed on a table with policemen and gendarmes around them.” In other words, Ottoman suppression of the images was originally directed at their display and availability, probably in photographer’s shops. The Inspectorate of Rumelia was instructed to investigate the matter, with the predictable remark that “this was absolutely contrary to the truth and the result of a deceitful fabrication by evildoers.”39 The answer came the following day: In [1890–1891], when Faik Pasha was governor and Mehmed Pasha commander of the Gendarmerie, the severed heads of Greek bandits killed at Goritsa were brought to Monastir and their photographs taken in the presence of gendarmes and policemen. The governor’s office in Monastir reports that the glass plates of these photographs were seized and destroyed, and we have instructed all those concerned that if any such photographs are to be found, they should be seized and destroyed, together with their glass plates.40 Evidently, then, de Weindel was telling the truth when he claimed that his journal had gotten hold of some of the few images that had escaped destruction. A concrete illustration of this is provided by three surviving albumen prints, two of which correspond perfectly to photographs published in the press (17, 18, 19).41 The impact of these photographs on public opinion is not difficult to imagine. The real question is to understand how this episode of photographic history came into being. Where was the truth de Weindel was so eager to reveal? Throughout its correspondence, the Ottoman administration insistently referred to these images as “heinous plots” and “evil fabrications,” implying that they were forgeries of some sort. The subject of the original photographs is not in doubt, but could they have been staged? The panic which seems to have swept over the authorities suggests that they knew all too well that the only staging was in the men’s

poses and the studio props. Moreover, the tradition of chopping off heads, especially those of bandits, and using them as trophies and tangible proof of a victory or of an execution was a deeply rooted tradition in the Ottoman lands.42 Evidence that this gory business was still alive and well is found in some diplomatic correspondence from 1896, only a few years before these events. The Greek legation had conveyed a claim by one Mako Fatzoulari to the local authorities in Monastir for the bounty promised to the killers of a bandit by the name of Chanaka. The claim was rejected on the grounds that the bounty was conditional on presentation of the bandit’s severed head, which Fatzoulari had failed to produce.43 That the tangible proof extended to photographs was an innovation, to be sure. And yet, there were some inconsistencies on the other side, too. The massive and almost simultaneous use of these images in the Western illustrated press may have been the result of a chain reaction from one periodical to another, but it seems likely also to have been the result of a concerted effort of Macedonian freedom fighters or their supporters to bombard the Western public with hard evidence of atrocities committed in the region. Yet according to the reports from Monastir, there was a discrepancy of about ten years in the dates of the photographs. If the Ottoman authorities had every reason to lie about the nature of these photographs, they had none to predate them by a decade. It is possible that the images circulated in 1902 were recycled documents from the 1890s, which does not make them any less horrible, but significantly changes their political circumstances. There is yet another complicating factor. About a month into the crisis, the authorities in Salonica seized a stock of three hundred fifty photographs of severed heads. The culprit was a German watchmaker by the name of Bader, who also sold photographic equipment.44 He admitted to having had the images printed to order in Germany. Their content was described as “the severed heads of two persons from the Macedonian committees and the likeness of one living person” (20).45 Gone were the gendarmes and the soldiers, but who could the “living person,” obviously a civilian, have been? The answer is to be found in another image in Malet’s 1904 travelogue. Captioned as “a Macedonian postcard sold at stationery shops in Salonica,” it showed the two sides of a postcard, illustrated with a bearded man standing behind two likewise bearded but lifeless severed heads.46 The inscriptions are difficult to read, but luckily there is another copy of the postcard in the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle.47 The name of the publisher, “G. Bader, Salonique,” confirms that this postcard was one of those confiscated in 1903. And the caption helpfully identifies the scene: “Macedonian brigands. The Simotta affair of 1899.” The criminal Karalivanos gang had abducted a Salonica merchant named Simotta and killed three members of his household. After forty days in captivity, and thanks to the defection of one of the gang members, he was freed and some members of the gang were killed and decapitated.48 The postcard depicted the exhibition of these heads—presumably as a reassuring expression of the terrible and implacable justice of the state. Yet the presence of a living man who looked pretty much like a brigand himself is surprising. Was he one of the survivors, forced to pose as an example? Or was he the defector? The mystery persists. Despite de Weindel’s claim that “a photographic plate cannot lie,” it seems impossible to ascertain the exact circumstances and meaning of these photographs. There is little doubt that the practice of posing next to severed heads had developed as a popular subgenre of studio photography. Was the impetus for it the “push” of soldiers and

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brigands alike, who wanted a memento of their bravura and of the utter destruction of their foes? Or was it the “pull” exerted by a public demand that owed much to the promotional techniques of provincial photographers? Most likely, both factors fed on each other to create a market, somewhere between novelty and pornography, which extended from the individual participant to the local purchaser. Shocking as they may be, these photographs seem to have functioned rather smoothly in a particular environment for over a decade, catering to needs and expectations of the local population. Outsiders—especially foreigners, but also people from the capital and other provinces of the empire— seem to have played a marginal role. True, the postcard in the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle was sent (with impeccable good taste) by a Frenchman to his “dear nieces” in Marseilles, but the extreme rarity of such items outside of the Ottoman lands suggests that this was not a very popular or familiar commodity for tourists.49 And yet a single leak at the right moment seems to have caused a sudden explosion of images of Ottoman gendarmes posing around severed heads in major European illustrated magazines.

The combined effect of an inquisitive French journalist (perhaps motivated by European geopolitical sympathies) and an overzealous provincial administration, transformed the nature of these photographs. From a staged memento of local violence and manliness, they were promoted to the status of truthful evidence in a major political conflict. Never had Abdülhamid’s saying seemed truer. 17, 18, 19 Three albumen prints of Ottoman soldiers and gendarmes posing with severed heads in Macedonian photograph studios. The photograph on the left is evidently the source for the covers of L’Illustration and La Vie illustrée, as well as the inner page of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. The middle photograph corresponds to one of the images used in La Vie illustrée and to that in Albert Malet’s Tour du Monde article, published the following year. The third photograph does not seem to have been reproduced in the press. Sinan Kuneralp Collection, Istanbul. 20 “Macedonian brigands. The Simotta affair of 1899,” postcard published by G. Bader, Salonica [Thessaloniki], dated and mailed on 26 October 1901. Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Thessaloniki, Photographic Archive, Papaioannou Collection, 57616.

TAMED IMAGES Severed heads in the foreign press could seriously harm the empire’s image, and that of its sovereign. Images proved to be a most dangerous tool, open to all sorts of manipulations. For Abdülhamid, therefore, it was of crucial importance to find ways to counter such offensives—or at least to neutralize their impact. He had several options, the most radical of which was to prevent negative material from being published at all, and in the event that it was, to obtain an immediate retraction. Since he had no real leverage on the international press, the best he could do was to prevent these images from reaching the Ottoman public. Numerous orders to prohibit or seize magazines attest to his desperate efforts to filter images within the empire’s boundaries. They often met with little success, as the inviolability of foreign post offices represented a major breach in the watertight system Abdülhamid sought to establish.50 The Sultan did try to exert some power over the production of images and information in the West. His ambassadors in Paris and other capitals were constantly trying to divert attacks, including from the illustrated press. To a certain extent European governments did try to avoid the more outrageous forms of criticism, especially in mainstream press organs; but the

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marginal press was free to indulge in very harsh depictions of Ottoman atrocities and abuses. A typical example was the radical L’Assiette au beurre, whose uncompromising political stand led it to devote entire issues to condemning Abdülhamid’s regime as criminal, especially with respect to the treatment of the Armenian population.51 In the last decade before World War I, longstanding European anxieties about an explosive “Eastern Question” figured prominently in the press. But there was often a general feeling that perhaps even the authoritarian Abdülhamid was preferable to a sudden and uncontrolled collapse of the Ottoman Empire; the sovereign knew well how to exploit this chronic weakness in order to maintain and defend some of his most untenable policies. He was also known to use bribery and flattery to obtain the support of individuals with power and influence. It has often been claimed that some editors and journalists in Europe were in his pay, and could thus be manipulated into either praising his regime or preventing negative publicity. While such assertions are difficult to prove, the state archives abound in documents concerning the awarding of decorations to men and women thought to be of influence.52 In reality, apart from some marginal individuals ready to sell their services to the Sultan, most representatives of this powerful sector were impervious to Ottoman manipulation. Difficult as it is to measure what has not been published, the mainstream European illustrated press does seem to have been somewhat more lenient than if there had been no strings attached; harshly negative images like the severed heads of 1903 constituted a relatively marginal portion of a very dense iconographic coverage of the empire. If damage control was possible up to a certain point, it was clearly more difficult to force certain images upon the magazines of the time, especially those published outside the empire. An instance has been found in which Abdülhamid had the Istanbul photographer Pascal Sébah document the suffering of Muslim civilians, especially women, during the advance of the Russian army in the 1877–1878 conflict, and these images were then used as source material for a composite engraving in Le Monde illustré.53 But this almost unique case of a perspective sympathetic to the Muslim victims of the conflict was drowned in a mass of violent images of “Turkish barbarism,” and was published with too little context to encourage empathy. Generally speaking, when the Ottoman Empire made it into the pages of the major illustrated magazines of the time, it was on Europe’s terms and not according to an agenda set by the Ottoman government. It was only after the end of Abdülhamid’s autocratic regime that the Europeans adopted a more sympathetic stand toward the empire. From the Young Turk Revolution of July 1908 on, the Western media gave short-lived but enthusiastic support to the new regime through broad photographic coverage of the radical changes the empire was undergoing. The rather skewed and erratic way in which images were transferred from an Ottoman context to a European one is well illustrated by a specific case in 1899, in which a group photograph of three imperial princes and two comrades was recycled. In the photograph, showing five children in uniform stiffly lined up in front of the monumental staircase of a palace, was published in L’Illustration with the caption, “Prince Abdul-Rahim Efendi, the Sultan’s son, admitted into the Muslim religion.” Only three of the five boys were identified, and a small note directed readers to a related article (21). Prince Abdürrahim, age five, had just been circumcised—hence the reference to admission into Islam. Ceremonies and celebrations had followed and according to custom this had been the occasion for the circumcision of some of

the prince’s friends, seen in the photograph, and of “thousands of poor children of the capital,” who had then received gifts from the Sultan. The whole event had cost 250,000 Ottoman pounds, the equivalent of 5,750,000 francs.54 The photograph was authentic, of course, and can be identified as the work of Boghos Tarkoulian (22).55 The reference to circumcision was correct, though the identification of the children was incomplete. Yet the real context of the photograph was lost. To recover it requires a thorough analysis of the local press of the time. On 9 June 1899, three weeks before L’Illustration, the illustrated weekly İrtika (Rising) published the photograph on its cover, giving a very different impression from that of the image safely tucked inside the French magazine (23).56 İrtika was owned and run by Tahir Bey, a supporter of the regime. Evidently this was a major event, which the magazine intended to advertise as part of its ongoing glorification of the sovereign. Malumat (Information), another weekly illustrated magazine owned by the same Tahir, had published the same photograph a day earlier, not on the cover, but as a centerfold with detailed captions in Turkish and in French (24). The issue was filled with poems by a legion of sycophantic bureaucrats and included a pompous acclamation of the Sultan’s act of magnanimity. These celebratory texts were followed by another series of poems, devoted to the inauguration of the Hamidiye Hospital for children.57 The connection between the two events is revealed in yet another of the major illustrated magazines of the time, Ahmed İhsan Bey’s Servet-i Fünun (Treasury of the Arts). On 8 June 1899, the same publication date as Malumat, its cover boasted a photograph of the hospital with a revealing bilingual caption: “The ‘Hamidié’ Hospital for children, erected at the expense of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan and inaugurated on Monday, June 5, on the occasion of the circumcision ceremony of His Imperial Highness Abdul-Rahim Efendi” (25). Inside, instead of the photograph of the princes, the magazine chose to publish an image of one of the wards, accompanied by a long and detailed description of the hospital.58 The synchronicity of these publications underscores one of the main characteristics of the Hamidian press: its univocal and unconditional submission to the regime’s priorities. This political control went beyond the simple notion of censorship: the government determined not only what should not be said, but also what should be said. Three separate magazines, two owned by the same publisher, harmonized their accounts of an imperial show of munificence. Each focused only on a particular aspect of the event, however, so that the entire picture was impossible to see unless all three were viewed together. This anomaly probably derived from each publication’s slightly different profile. İrtika was the most traditional, discussing mostly literature and poetry; Malumat, which proudly called itself L’Illustration turque, came closer to the “modern” magazines of the time, but openly espoused a conservative Islamic discourse; Servet-i Fünun was the most Western of all, with numerous illustrations printed on glossy paper, and a focus on technological and artistic novelty and travel pieces, generally borrowed from the West. Each magazine thus reflected differences in register, ranging from Malumat’s conservative praise of the Sultan to Servet-i Fünun’s modernist admiration for a brand-new hospital. L’Illustration had ignored the whole matter of the hospital and focused on the circumcision of the little prince as most likely to draw the attention of readers. The naive pose of children was charming, and the huge sums spent on the event lent it the quality of a tale from the Thousand and One Nights—very different from the rather mundane announcement of the

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21 “Prince Abdürrahim Efendi, son of the Sultan, is received into the Muslim religion,” L’Illustration, no. 2940, (1 July 1899), page 13. EE.

22 Prince Abdürrahim’s circumcision, photograph by Boghos Tarkoulian, 1899. ÖMKC.

23 Prince Abdürrahim’s circumcision, cover of İrtika, no. 13, 28 May 1315 (9 June 1899). National Library, Ankara.

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building of a children’s hospital. Despite the fact that a much more sophisticated story was available, connecting a religious tradition with a modern establishment, the French magazine chose to isolate the most “exotic” element and present it as a curiosity. The image had been transferred to an invented European context on Europe’s terms, and the local story rejected entirely. So much so that this image was soon turned into a popular tourist postcard—which, ironically, the Hamidian administration tried to prevent from circulating (26).59 This case neatly illustrates the limits of Abdülhamid’s capacity to influence the foreign media. Whether he really tried to feed this story to the Western illustrated press is not clear; in fact, it is likely that the French magazine itself cherry-picked this photograph for its appeal, and was simply uninterested in reporting on a developing and modernizing Ottoman Empire. A parallel may be drawn between the fate of this photograph and that of the albums presented to the Library of Congress and British Library. In all three cases, Abdülhamid had attempted to use photography to force a positive vision of the empire on targeted audiences. The West, however, remained unimpressed and simply ignored this photographic onslaught, sticking to a specific repertoire of images consistent with its own preconceptions, reinforcing age-old stereotypes or the dominant political agenda of the moment. Nevertheless, what Abdülhamid failed to impose on Western audiences he did foist on the local illustrated press, where it formed the core message. The nearly uniform narrative offered by the three magazines about Abdürrahim’s circumcision and the inauguration of the children’s hospital was repeated with disturbing regularity on all sorts of matters; the discourse always converged on the glorification and praise of the Sultan, his achievements, and his entourage. In some cases all three magazines shared a common image to commemorate some striking event. For example, when Marshal Gazi Osman Pasha’s death was announced on 5 April 1900, both Malumat and İrtika mourned this former war hero with an identical cover photograph, while Servet-i Fünun used a similar but full-length image as a centerfold (27,28, 29).60

24 Prince Abdürrahim’s circumcision in Malumat, no. 187, 27 May 1315 (8 June 1899). ÖMKC. 25 The Hamidiye Hospital for Children, cover of Servet-i Fünun 17, no. 430, 27 May 1315 (8 June 1899). National Library, Ankara. 26 “The Imperial Princes,” postcard, publisher unknown, dated and mailed on 5 February 1905. EE.

More frequent were variations on a theme. Most often this was a new construction contributing to the modernization of the empire. Government palaces were extremely popular, as they illustrated the state’s ability to conquer the periphery; so were bridges and tunnels, which were presented as striking achievements of modern technology (30, 31, 32). Servet-i Fünun, strongly attached to the idea of progress, bombarded its readers with such images. Seven consecutive covers in the summer of 1900 boasted a high school in Nevşehir, a military depot in Gevgili, a girls’ high school in Ioannina, the same school with its students posing before it, the government palace in Persican, a government building and shops in Niğde, and a hospital for the poor in Konya (33, 34). The captions used heightened language and incantatory repetition to celebrate the Sultan’s magnanimity. Each building was presented as resulting from the protection (saye) of His Majesty the Emperor or the Caliph (hazret-i padişahi, hazret-i hilafetpenahi), bearer of prosperity (umranvaye, mamuriyetvaye), of bounty (füyuzatvaye), of knowledge (maarifvaye), of compassion (merahimvaye).61 True, 1900 was a special year, Abdülhamid’s twenty-fifth on the throne. In a sense, these images were building toward a climax on 1 September, when a heavily illustrated special issue was published, dedicated to the Silver Jubilee.62 Page after page of photographs revealed the latest developments in all areas associated with modernity, progress, and welfare, from

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Salonica to Sanaa and from Bursa to Mecca. Four hospitals, a hospice, two public fountains, two bridges, a lazaretto, two medical laboratories, a column commemorating the telegraph, an arms depot, a post office, the Imperial Museum and School of Fine Arts, an institute of sericulture, a new grand boulevard, and two barracks. Schools were particularly prominent: in Aleppo, Sinop, Salonica, and Edirne; groups of students from Ioannina and Yemen were shown, as well as four group photographs of military units. Perhaps most striking of all these photographs is a school group, “first year students of the school for the deaf and dumb,” posing with their instructors (35).63 Twenty boys of all ages, flanked by six instructors, stage a visual message directed at both the reader and the Sultan himself. The teachers stand in a typical posture of obsequious deference, with hands joined over the lower belly (el pençe divan). The children, arranged in three rows according to size, fulfill two different roles: the younger hold their hands with palms turned up in a gesture of prayer, while the elder each make a different sign with one hand, spelling the predictable collective phrase, “Padişahım çok yaşa,” long live the Sultan, the most common way in which the Sultan was celebrated in popular events.64 Behind them hangs a large framed tuğra of

the Sultan, yet another reminder of the invisible yet ubiquitous Abdülhamid, to whom all this display of gratitude and loyalty is addressed.

27, 28, 29 Left to right: “The late Gazi Osman Pasha,” İrtika, no. 54, 24 March 1316 (6 April 1900); Malumat, no. 231, 30 March 1316 (12 April 1900); Servet-i Fünun, no. 474, 30 March 1316 (12 April 1900). National Library, Ankara. 30 Iron bridge over the River Veshash in Baghdad,” Servet-i Fünun, no. 475, 6 April 1316 (18 April 1900). National Library, Ankara.

This is a fascinating image in itself, but more extraordinary is that it is identical with one of the Abdullah Frères photographs included in the famous Library of Congress and British Library albums, produced some seven years earlier.65 Servet-i Fünun clearly had no scruples about recycling an old photograph, and the public most likely did not even notice it. More importantly, however, this photograph reveals a striking relationship between the magazine’s iconographic program and the authorities’ somewhat desperate attempt to impress Western governments and public opinion with photographic material such as the Washington and London albums. The thousands of photographs that had accumulated for over a decade in the palace archives may have failed as a public-relations campaign, but they found a useful outlet in the local illustrated press, where images were systematically pumped through a subservient and controlled media to address a captive audience. With a circulation of about four thousand, the weekly Servet-i Fünun could have only a limited and socially skewed impact, but the Ottoman illustrated press as a whole ended up bringing to the greater public the positive images of an autocratic modernity that the foreign media were unwilling to include in their coverage of the Ottoman Empire.66

IMAGES REDEEMED Between propaganda and criticism, censorship and public relations, lay a huge gray area, characterized by freedom or simply by the lack of effective control. Scholarship tends to focus on the extremes and exceptions, always easier to document and to contextualize. Because they are visible and appealing, we know more about censorship and scandal than about the

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mysteries of the normal and the ordinary. In the case of photography, the only way to see past the frozen images of censored magazines or of government mouthpieces is to look at the actual circulation of images among individuals. The methodological challenge to analyzing this undefined mass of documentation is overwhelming. The problem may be narrowed if we focus on one representative and very popular type of image whose circulation is fairly traceable: the postcard. The postcard offers a good example of the sudden leap in the circulation of images at the turn of the twentieth century; it also reveals the limits of our ability and willingness to give ordinary and ubiquitous objects the treatment they deserve. The rare existing studies of Ottoman postcards concentrate on the wide repertoire of images that graced them. Little attention is given to the information that can be gleaned from the backs. Yet these novelty objects were used by a steadily growing number of correspondents and collectors, and addresses, postmarks, captions, and texts all provide a rich store of data.67 Postcards have been published as an iconographic document of the bygone beauties of Istanbul and other Ottoman cities, or of a vanished lifestyle.68 The few studies that have focused on the postcard as a textual medium have made a selective use of single cases or specific samples determined by the identity of the author or recipient.69 From a rare contemporary report on this novelty, we know that before World War I sales in Istanbul reached “several million pieces.” There were several genres and categories: most popular were views of the city and its monuments, followed by “local types,” from street vendors to dervishes and including “Turkish ladies” or “Oriental beauties.” Allegorical scenes were common for holidays; the faces of attractive women were also much in demand, as were those of “women in bathing suits creating the illusion of nudity.” So were humorous cards and reproductions of famous paintings or historical scenes, among which Napoléon’s achievements were particularly appreciated. At the bottom of the ladder were bawdy and risqué scenes representing couples in various degrees of intimacy and dress and even “obscene series of rather realist but crude photographs” to be found in the backrooms of vendors.70 As to the rest of the empire, postcards were common in urban centers and port cities, but almost absent from the hinterland.71 By and large, the market depended heavily on foreigners, tourists or residents, to whom the postcard was both a memento and a medium of succinct, cheap, and rapid correspondence, and of Ottomans who espoused Western practices and lifestyle. Yet the actual uses of postcards are still begging for a comprehensive survey; a broad-scope review of thousands of postcards could begin to make sense of the complex relationships among image, caption, layout, quality, origin, publisher, text, date, sender, and recipient. Notably, a large number of vintage postcards are uncirculated, either from collections or from unsold stock. Of those that did circulate a surprisingly large number have a totally unrelated text and image. Today we forget that it was then very common for individuals to collect postcards by engaging in exchanges with total strangers; thus many postcards that circulated widely and were well-preserved have practically no relation to any context. 31, 32 The Eskişehir-Ankara railroad in the Sakarya Valley, Malumat, no. 233, 13 April 1316 (25 April 1900), pages 824–825; İrtika, no. 57, 14 April 1316 (26 April 1900). National Library, Ankara.

33 Inauguration of the high school for girls in Ioannina, Servet-i Fünun, no. 487, 29 June 1316 (12 July 1900). National Library, Ankara.

This may frustrate the historian who dreams of giving meaning to such exchanges, but it speaks to the phenomenal popularity and momentum that the photographic image acquired by the turn of the twentieth century. The work of some of the best photographers was used, often

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without identification, to produce myriads of postcards that were bought, collected, exchanged, and mailed in prodigious quantities. The images Basiretçi Ali Efendi had seen displayed in a shop window some thirty or forty years earlier had now been transferred to a postcard that could be had for 10 to 20 paras and sent to a friend or acquaintance for another 10 or 20. No wonder, then, that most of the cards that circulated were merely a colorful means to expedite messages. “A French family wishes to rent your house for thirty liras a year. Please advise as to whether this is possible or not,” says a color postcard of the Princes’ Islands sent by one Nafıa Hanım from Kandilli to a Şazimend Hanım in Üsküdar (36). In all likelihood, the choice of this view was random, as when a certain Nadide wrote to her niece in Salonica to announce that her sister had given birth to a girl named Emine Celile on a postcard showing the “Sweet Waters of Europe” a favorite promenade in the vicinity of the capital (37). Some choices, however, cannot be dismissed as accidental or casual. In spring 1914, Mehmed Hüsameddin, probably a young officer posted in Baghdad, sent greetings to Cavalry Lieutenant Ali Ekrem Bey in Istanbul on a postcard with a reproduction of an 1840 painting by Horace Vernet, Judah and Tamar. The scene is the biblical story of Tamar, who poses as a prostitute in order to trick her father-in-law Judah into getting her pregnant (38). The postcard titles this, oddly, “A historical Arabic view.”

34 Students of the high school for girls in Ioannina, no. 488, 6 July 1316 (19 July 1900). National Library, Ankara.

The soldier apparently fell for a slightly erotic and typically Orientalist depiction of Arabs, which perhaps corresponded to his own and his peers’ vision of the populations of this distant province of the empire.72 And nothing shows better the universal appeal of this new medium than a pair of identical Orientalist postcards reproducing The Tryst, a painting from about 1840 attributed to Jean-Léon Gérôme. In both, the title is given as “harem scene in Constantinople,” and both were mailed in 1902, one by a Frenchman writing from Bulgaria to his cousins in Saâcy, and one by an Arab trader from Aleppo, writing to the famous trading company of Maghamez Brothers in Istanbul (39).

35 “First-year students of the school for the deaf and dumb,” Servet-i Fünun, no. 494, 19 August 1316 (1 September 1900), page 418. National Library, Ankara.

Of course, the relationship between text and image was not always erratic. One telling example is a postcard of the thermal spa at Yalova, recently renovated by order of

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36 “Princes’ Islands, Constantinople,” postcard from a photograph by Sébah & Joaillier, published by Max Fruchtermann, dated and mailed on 24 March 1905. EE. 37 “Sweet Waters of Europe, Greetings from Constantinople,” postcard dated 17 May 1321 (30 May 1905). EE. 38 “A historical Arabic view,” postcard published by Abdulaly & Brothers, Baghdad, dated and mailed on 25 February 1329 (10 March 1914). EE. 39 “Harem Scene, Constantinople,” two postcards published by the Établissement Horticole de Therapia, mailed from Aleppo on 30 June 1902 and from Bulgaria on 15 January 1902. EE.

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Abdülhamid, mailed from that resort to Istanbul in 1899 (40). The text is addressed to a certain Ziya Bey, an employee of the Privy Purse, and reads like a pastiche of a caption from İrtika or Malumat: A general view of the mountain baths of Yalova, from among the glorious establishments of His Imperial Majesty My Lord, The present missive, which bears a general view of the Yalova mountain baths, constituting a highly esteemed and superior complement to His Imperial Majesty’s achievements of prosperity and glory, is presented to You as I submit my sincere expression of respect and beg that you may continue to bestow [upon me] your favors and friendship.73 Abdülhamid would have been proud of this loyal subject, who fully embraced the rhetoric of imperial public relations in his correspondence with a (fellow?) bureaucrat. Some fifteen years later, during World War I, a postcard showing the so-called Tomb of Sardanapalus in Tarsus provided a Young Turk version of the same phenomenon. A teacher on leave there wrote to his students in Bursa, giving them a concise geography and history lesson. He described the produce of the area, the character of its people, its demography, its schools, and its principal religious and historical landmarks. Some expressions were clearly in tune with the political Zeitgeist: “the French school has been seized”; “the town has a population of 32,000, with only 1,000 Greeks and Armenians”; “the school children are particularly intelligent and studious” (41).

40 “Souvenir of Yalova, Thermal baths of Coury-les-Bains,” postcard published by Max Fruchtermann, dated 17 July 1315 (29 July 1899). EE.

41 “The tomb of Sardanapalus at Tarsus,” postcard published by D. G. Mavroyannis, Mersin, dated and mailed on 30 December 1330 (12 January 1915). EE.

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42 “In Stamboul (Constantinople)—A new sight: women of the people buying cockades,” L’Illustration, no. 3417, 22 August 1908. EE. 43 “H. I. M. Sultan Mehmed Khan V,” postcard published anonymously, uncirculated. Cengiz Kahraman collection, Istanbul. 44 “Mahmud Şevket Pasha, Generalissimo of the Army of Liberation,” postcard published by MJC (Moïse Israilovitch, Constantinople), mailed on 4 September 1329 (17 September 1913). EE.

The difference between the pompous rhetoric of a Hamidian bureaucrat and the enthusiastic discourse of a Young Turk teacher denotes more than just a change in tone. The revolution of July 1908 had radically changed the way in which images were used and disseminated, while at the same time introducing a new repertoire of themes and subjects. For a time, during that short-lived Ottoman springtime, restrictions on the use and circulation of images had been lifted, unleashing the full power of photography at the service of the new regime. Once again, L’Illustration offers a striking testimony of this phenomenon, thanks to a photograph of a street scene published in the days that followed the revolution. The caption offers the magazine’s ostensible reason for publishing this photograph: “A new sight: women of the people buying cockades.”74 But the women are in the background; far more prominent is a young boy who stares right into the camera and gestures to his friend, as if he wanted him to turn around and face the lens too. In his right hand, he holds a large printed photograph of a bearded dignitary, easily recognizable as Kâmil Pasha, appointed Grand Vizier on 5 August 1908. This scene is a powerful reminder of the radical transformation undergone

by photography both technologically and politically. The arrival of the snapshot—fast, casual, and unstaged—had brought a sense that reality could be recorded—an idea that photojournalism exploited to the full during the troubles to give readers a totally new feeling of immediacy. The object of the photograph himself revealed yet another layer of novelty by displaying the photographic political portrait as a new kind of symbolic commodity that fueled political engagement and sentiments of patriotism (42). It is no surprise, then, that the new politics led to a new iconography, disseminated by a number of means, but especially postcards. These now boasted a whole new set of image types: group photographs of leading Young Turks, warships, allegorical scenes of the Ottoman nation reborn, and portraits of individual heroes and statesmen soon conquered an iconographic space once carefully monitored by Abdülhamid’s censors. As if to reverse Abdülhamid’s reluctance to display his likeness, his successor Mehmed V Reşad’s portrait became one of the most popular icons of the new order, reproduced on myriad magazine covers and postcards (43). The paternal appearance of the aging monarch provided a comforting image of unity and stability in the troubled years of revolution and war that preceded the final conflagration of the Great War. The very photogenic Mahmud Şevket Pasha, commander of the army that “liberated” the Ottoman capital in April 1909, following the counterrevolution organized by the Young Turks’ opponents, was yet another candidate for visual glory (44).

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characteristic Prussian moustache became one of the last icons of the Ottoman Empire. The quantity of postcards that can still be found today—mostly uncirculated—is witness to the massive demand that must have existed for this memento of patriotism and budding nationalism.75 Why did Enver gain such iconic prominence over other actors of the time? His companion of the early days, Niyazi Bey, withdrew from politics rather rapidly and died in 1913; Mahmud Şevket Pasha was a contender, but he was assassinated that same year. Some of the civilian leaders, such as Ahmed Rıza, appeared in the press, but rarely on postcards. Talat and Cemal, the two other members of the triumvirate, who ruled the country with Enver throughout the war, were apparently just not postcard material. It may have been Enver’s youth and style that gave him such an overwhelming presence in the visual media. Yet crucially, he engaged actively in the construction of his own image, from the very beginning of his career. One postcard from 1908 or 1909 is particularly revealing of this process (45). Wearing his military outfit and gear, the young officer poses with his right hand holding a rifle, his eyes firmly set on the horizon beyond the camera, in an attitude of intense attention and determination. The French caption completes the scene by insisting on the martial and heroic nature of the image: “Enver Bey, the champion of Freedom, in campaign uniform.” Enver was patently intent on seducing the mass public with his image of a gallant officer ready and willing to save the country from all threats and foes. By fashioning himself carefully into a certain role, he revived one of the most traditional genres in photography, the portrait, but brought it to an unprecedented level of public distribution.76

45 “The champion of Liberty, Enver Bey in campaign uniform,” 1908 or 1909, uncirculated postcard, published by Albert J. Barzilai, Salonica (Thessaloniki). Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Atatürk Library, Krt_000921.

With the changing times less conventional actors now appeared, whose youth and charisma introduced a new type of heroic imagery into the political realm. Among these, one man shone with particular intensity: Enver Bey, later Pasha, the man most closely associated with the active and heroic phase of the revolution. Starting as a simple officer posted in Macedonia, he had led the movement that had finally managed to topple Abdülhamid’s autocracy, forcing him to reinstate the constitution and parliament he had abolished more than thirty years earlier. This young officer—he was under thirty at the time—became a living symbol of the new regime, and remained so until the collapse of the empire at the end of the Great War. It was through photography, and particularly thanks to the massive production of postcards, that his reputation and image were formed. From the beginning of his career, when he was commonly referred to as the “Hero of Liberty,” to the apex of his power, when he combined the titles of War Minister, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, and imperial son-inlaw, postcards of him were ubiquitous. The image of this man in uniform and wearing his

In less than fifty years, on a bumpy path to modernity, photography in the Ottoman Empire evolved from the marginal status of a novelty for the elite few to an object of mass consumption. During the three decades of Abdülhamid’s modernist autocracy, its period of gestation, it was dominated by a growing tension between the natural propensity of the image to free itself from all constraints and the regime’s implacable desire to monitor and subdue it. The revolution of 1908 put an end to this tension by unleashing the full power of photography in the making of a new social and political order. It was not long, however, before this short-lived moment of freedom gave way to one of the darkest periods of Ottoman history; photography followed suit, and soon abandoned its recently achieved freedom to become the instrument of violent ideologies and aggressive nation building.

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NOTES 1 Basiretçi Ali, “Şehir Mektubu numero 27,” Basiret 458, 16 Cemaziyülahir 1288 (20 August 1287, 1 September 1871), 2. See also Basiretçi Ali, İstanbul Mektupları, ed. Nuri Sağlam (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2001), 51–52. All translations from Turkish and French are the author’s. 2 For noteworthy exceptions, see the photographic portraits of two of Sultan Abdülmecid’s daughters, Refia and Fatma, who posed for the Abdullah Frères photograph studio in radically Western garb, in Bahattin Öztuncay, The Photographers of Constantinople: Pioneers, Studios and Artists from Nineteenth Century Istanbul, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Aygaz, 2003), 213. 3 For early examples of Sébah’s “Turkish” women, see Öztuncay, Photographers of Constantinople, 454, 456–457; for “local types” by the same studio, see 464, 473, 493–499. 4 On 10 February 1892 the government gave orders prohibiting photographers from taking pictures of Greek and Armenian women wearing the Muslim veil and cloak (yaşmak ve ferace), “to show Muslim costume under a strange form to Europeans,” Prime Minister’s Ottoman Archives, Ottoman State Archives, Istanbul (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, hereafter BOA), İ. DH. 1264/99376, 11 Receb 1309 (9 February 1892). 5 BOA, Y. EE. KP. 17/1623, 24 Cemaziyülahir 1320; MF. MKT. 667/15, 5 Receb 1320 (8 October 1902); Y. EE. KP. 19/1834, 3 Rebiyülahir 1321 (29 June 1903); DH. MKT. 808/13, 20 Şevval 1321 (9 January 1904). On 6 June 1898 postcards produced in Germany and bearing the image of a veiled woman with the inscription Souvenir de Constantinople were banned and confiscated, BOA, MF. MKT. 398/57, 16 Muharrem 1316 (6 June 1898). Two years later, in November 1900, similar measures were taken to prevent the importation of postcards bearing images of veiled women, sacred buildings, the Kaaba and the names of God (BOA, BEO 1575/118094, 11 Receb 1316 (25 November 1898); İ. HUS. 85/1318, 18 Receb 1318 (2 December 1898). On 14 October 1901, a stock of postcards representing Muslim women and originating from Germany was seized and incinerated (BOA, BEO 1733/129925, 1 Receb 1319 (14 October 1901). As late as September 1907, a decree was issued to prevent peddlers from selling postcards with Muslim women to tourists on board the ships calling at the harbor (BOA, ZB 22/81, 6 September 1323, 19 September 1907). 6 Osman Hamdy Bey and Marie de Launay, Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873: Ouvrage publié sous le patronage de la Commission impériale de l’Exposition universelle de Vienne. Texte de Son Excellence Hamdy Bey,

commissaire général et par Marie de Launay, membre de la Commission impériale et du Jury international 1867 et 1873, Phototypie par P. Sébah, photographe privilégié (Constantinople [Istanbul]: Imprimerie du Levant Times and Shipping Gazette, 1873). Among salient studies, see most notably, Ahmet Ersoy, “A Sartorial Tribute to Late Tanzimat Ottomanism: The Elbise-i Osmaniyye Album,” Muqarnas 20 (2003): 187–207. 7 The book was published only in French, which clearly shows that it was not intended for internal consumption; the uncertain spelling in Turkish in some of the captions confirms that they were meant as a decorative “local” touch. 8 Carney E. S. Gavin, ed., “Imperial Self-Portrait: The Ottoman Empire as Revealed in the Sultan AbdulHamid II’s Photographic Albums Presented as Gifts to the Library of Congress (1893) and the British Museum (1894),” special issue, Journal of Turkish Studies 12 (1988). 9 Samuel S. Cox, Diversions of a Diplomat in Turkey (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1887), 36. 10 BOA, Y. MTV. 13/123, 18 Rebiyülahir 1301 (3 February 1299, 14 February 1884). 11 “The Sultan of Turkey and the British Museum,” The Times (London), 7 May 1894. 12 On Ottoman participation in universal expositions, see Zeynep Çelik, Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth Century World’s Fairs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 13 The Costumes populaires album was one of these. Two others were a collective work on Ottoman architecture, Edhem Pasha, Marie de Launay, Pierre Montani, Boghos Chachian, and Maillard, Usûl-ı Mimarî-i Osmânî; L’architecture ottomane Die ottomanische Baukunst (Constantinople: Imprimerie et Lithographie Centrales, 1873); and Philip Anton Dethier’s study of Istanbul and the Bosphorus, Le Bosphore et Constantinople: Description topographique et historique (Vienna: Alfred Hölder, 1873). 14 The Ottomans were absent from the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, most likely due to a major financial and political crisis in 1875–1876; in 1878 they had just ended a disastrous war with Russia and could not prepare for the Paris Exposition of that year; Abdülhamid himself—like many other sovereigns—chose to boycott the 1889 Paris Exposition due to its explicit reference to the centennial of the French Revolution.

15 Gavin, ed., Imperial Self-Portrait, 10–11, 25; Muhammad Isa Waley, “Images of the Ottoman Empire: The Photograph Albums Presented by Sultan Abdülhamid II,” British Library Journal 17, no. 2 (Autumn 1991): 112–113. 16 François Georgeon, for example, considers that “for the Sultan, examining these images in a way replaces inspection tours; it is a means of moving around his empire without being seen, incognito, as did some of his predecessors, who moved among the population in disguise,” François Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, le sultan calife (1876–1909) (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 162. 17 Cox, Diversions of a Diplomat, 37–45. 18 In December 1880 Abdullah Frères were formally accused of reproducing a photograph of the Sultan they had taken without his authorization; BOA, İ. DH. 820/66156; Y. PRK. BŞK. 4/33, 22 Muharrem 1295 (25 December 1880). This may, however, have been related to the fact that the studio had just a year earlier lost the imperial warrant of “appointment to the Sultan”; Öztuncay, Photographers of Constantinople, 222. The ban or restriction on Abdülhamid’s portrait merits a thorough study, especially with respect to its political, ideological, symbolic, and even psychological implications. 19 “Un selamlik nouveau style,” L’Illustration 3416 (15 August 1908), 116. 20 “Abdul-Hamid,” L’Illustration 3417 (22 August 1908). 21 “Le Sultan Abdul-Hamid,” L’Illustration 1750 (9 September 1876); “Abdul-Hamid Khan, souverain de l’Empire ottoman,” Petit journal 327 (21 February 1897); see also Öztuncay, Photographers of Constantinople, 219, 356.

Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 26–27, 33–35. 26 For example, Gavin, ed., Imperial Self-Portrait, 7; Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, 161. 27 [Tahsin Paşa], Sultan Abdülhamid: Tahsin Paşa’nın Yıldız Hatıraları (Istanbul: Boğaziçi Yayınları, 1996), 355–356. 28 L’Illustration 3131 (28 February 1903). 29 Albert Malet, “En Macédoine,” L’Illustration 3131 (28 February 1903): 134. 30 This episode, and the chain reaction it caused in the Ottoman administration, has been thoroughly studied by İpek Yosmaoğlu-Turner in “Severed Heads in the Camera Lucida: The Impossible Task of Ottoman Image Management during the Macedonian Struggle,” paper presented at the Local and Imperial Approaches to the Ottoman/Greek Social History Workshop, Samos, 2001. It is discussed with much less detail in her Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), 227–229. 31 BOA, TFR. İ. A. 4/380, 25 February 1318 (10 March 1903). 32 Vie illustrée 228 (27 February 1903). 33 Several copies are preserved in the Ottoman State Archives, BOA, BEO 2015-151087. 34 Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung 12, no. 11 (15 March 1903): 163. 35 BOA, TFR. İ. A. 4/380, 17 February 1318 (2 March 1903).

22 “Une paire d’amis,” L’Illustration, 2904 (22 October 1898).

36 Albert Malet, “En Macédoine—Au vilayet de Monastir,” Tour du monde 10, no. 2 (9 January 1904): 15.

23 “Fin de règne,” L’Illustration 3454 (8 May 1909).

37 George N. Chakaloff and Stanislav J. Shoomkoff, The Macedonian Problem and Its Proper Solution (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1904).

24 On the “visibility” of the sultans, see Edhem Eldem, “Pouvoir, modernité et visibilité: L’évolution de l’iconographie sultanienne à l’époque moderne,” in Omar Carlier and Raphaëlle Nollez-Goldbach, eds., Le Corps du leader: Construction et représentation dans les pays du Sud (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), 171–202. 25 On the Ottoman coat of arms see Edhem Eldem, Pride and Privilege: A History of Ottoman Orders, Medals and Decorations (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, 2004). 282–286; Selim Deringil, The

38 Henri de Weindel, “Les atrocités turques en Macédoine—Quelques documents,” Vie illustrée 228 (27 February 1903): 334. 39 BOA, BEO 2019/151369, 24 February 1318 (9 March 1903); TFR. İ. A. 380/11, 25 February 1318 (10 March 1903); BOA, İ. MTZ (04) 24/1522, 15 February 1318 (28 February 1903).

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40 BOA, TFR. İ. A. 4/380, 16 February 1318 (1 March 1903). 41 Sinan Kuneralp Collection, Istanbul. I first published these extraordinary photographs in Death in Istanbul: Death and Its Rituals in Ottoman-Islamic Culture (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archive and Research Centre, 2005), 188–190. 42 Matei Cazacu, “La ‘mort infâme’: Décapitation et exposition des têtes à Istanbul,” in Gilles Veinstein, ed., Les Ottomans et la mort: Permanences et mutations (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 245–289; Eldem, Death in Istanbul, 80–81, 188–190. 43 Verbal note 21 175/56 from Foreign Minister Ahmed Tevfik Pasha to the Greek minister Mavrocordato, 25 October 1896, in Sinan Kuneralp, ed., The Ottoman Empire and Its Neighbours: Ottoman Diplomatic Documents on the Turco-Greek Border Issue, Part 3 (18831912) (Istanbul: ISIS, 2015), 259, doc. 481. 44 G. Bader appears as an horloger (watchmaker) in the Annuaire oriental du commerce, de l’industrie, de l’administration et de la magistrature, 14 (Constantinople: Cervati Frères, 1896), 991. 45 BOA, TFR. İ. A. 4/380, 17 March 1319 (30 March 1903). 46 Malet, “En Macédoine—Au vilayet de Monastir,” 20. 47 “Brigands macédoniens. Affaire Simotta,” postcard published by G. Bader, Salonica, dated and mailed from Salonica on 26 October 1901. Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Photographic Archive, Papaioannou Collection, Thessaloniki, 57616.

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aux derniers jours d’Abdul-Hamid (Paris: Librairie des Sciences Politiques et Sociales Marcel Rivière, [1907]), 71–72). On the issue of “image management,” as he calls it, with particular reference to the press, see Deringil, Well-Protected Domains, 136–141; see also Eldem, Pride and Privilege, 345–346. 53 Martina Baleva, “Das Imperium schlägt zurück: Bilderschlachten und Bilderfronten im RussischOsmanischen Krieg 1877–1878,” in Martina Baleva, Ingeborg Reichle, and Oliver Lerone Schultz, eds., Image Match: Visueller Transfer, “Imagescapes” und Intervisualität in globalen Bild-Kulturen (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2012), 87–108; “İmparatorluğun Misillemesi: 1877–1878 Osmanlı-Rus Savaşında Resim Savaşları ve Resim Cepheleri,” Toplumsal Tarih 228 (December 2012): 32–41. An interesting reference to Ottoman photographic documentation of war casualties is found in the contemporary British press: “Although the Turks did not, as might have been expected, reply to the representations of the Powers about the Geneva Convention by bringing forward the ravages committed by Cossacks and Bulgarians, of which they had got together a long record, they chose an indirect way of reminding the Powers of these occurrences, the Sultan having through one of his Chamberlains sent to the Missions the photographs of the Mahomedans who had been killed and maimed,” “The Porte,” Times (London), 3 September 1877. 54 L’Illustration 2940 (1 July 1899): 13, 16.

49 By comparison, postcards of decapitated thieves were very common in China, for example.

55 This photograph was published in Pierre de Gigord, Gilbert Beaugé, Nazan Ölçer, François Neuville, and Engin Çizgen, Images d’empire: Aux origines de la photographie en Turquie, Türkiye’de Fotoğrafın Öncüleri (Istanbul: Institut d’Études Françaises d’Istanbul, 1993), 176, with a wrong date (1897) and no reference to the photographer. It was identified as Tarkoulian’s work in Bahattin Öztuncay, Hanedan ve Kamera: Osmanlı Sarayından Portreler, Ömer M. Koç Koleksiyonu (Istanbul: Aygaz, 2010), 108.

50 Georgeon, Abdulhamid II, 163.

56 İrtika 1, no. 13, 29 Muharrem 1317 (9 June 1899).

51 See, for example, L’Assiette au beurre turque: Le grand saigneur 71 (10 August 1902), entirely devoted to a very explicit depiction of the Armenian massacres.

57 Malumat 5, no. 187, 28 Muharrem 1317 (8 June 1899).

52 While insisting on the inefficiency of the system, Paul Fesch recounts Abdülhamid’s efforts to set up favorable newspapers in Europe and bribe the Western press; he also gives a list of French journalists awarded Ottoman decorations, Paul Fesch, Constantinople

59 BOA, ZB. 390/64, 29 August 1323 (11 September 1907).

48 G. F. Abbott, “Brigands and Their Ways,” Wide World Magazine 7 (April–September 1901): 147, www.imma.edu.gr/imma/dbs/Artifacts/index. html?start=0&lq=simotta&show=1, accessed 6 January 2015.

58 Servet-i Fünun 17, no. 430, 27 May 1315 (8 June 1899).

60 İrtika 54, 24 March 1316 (6 April 1900); Malumat 231, 30 March 1316 (12 April 1900); Servet-i Fünun 474, 30 March 1316 (12 April 1900).

61 Servet-i Fünun 485, 15 June 1316 (28 June 1900); 486, 22 June 1316 (5 July 1900); 487, 29 June 1316 (12 July 1900); 488,6 July 1316 (19 July 1900); 489, 13 July 1316 (26 July 1900); 490, 20 July 1316 (2 August 1900); 491, 27 July 1316 (9 August 1900).

69 I have myself contributed to this tendency by publishing a POW postcard from the end of World War I (Eldem, “Filatelinin hazin yüzü: I. Dünya Harbi sonunda bir harp esiri kartı,” Toplumsal Tarih 26 (February 1996): 12–13. More recently, Oktay Özel has published two textually fascinating postcards from an agricultural school freshman in 1914 and from an 62 Servet-i Fünun 494, 19 August 1316 (1 September 1900). Armenian family in 1912 (Özel, “Gözlerinden öperim . . . Mektebden en samimî çiftçi selâmları,” Kebikeç 63 Servet-i Fünun, 494, 19 August 1316 (1 September 32 (2011): 15–30; “Eğer ki kâbil ise bizleri kat’iyyen 1900), 418. merak itmeyin!” Kebikeç 33 (2012): 311–321). For a comprehensive collection of “authored” postcards, 64 Curiously, the children spell the text in reverse, from see Nuri Akbayar, ed., Pek Sevgili Beybabacığım. Yahya their right to left, resulting in a photograph that spells Kemal’den Babasına Kartpostallar (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi the words backward in the Arabic script used at the Yayınları, 1998). time for Turkish. This suggests that neither the school nor the magazine expected viewers to be able to read 70 Ernest Giraud, “Cartes postales illustrées,” Revue the text. commerciale du Levant: Bulletin de la Chambre de commerce française de Constantinople 26, no. 301 (30 65 As published in Gavin, ed., Imperial Self-Portrait, April 1912): 825–828. 174, 240, 259. This photograph is found in Library of Congress album 9544 and British Library album 71 Revue commerciale du Levant 26, no. 301. 47. The corresponding image in the Yıldız albums is 90834/36. 72 On Ottoman Orientalism see Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American Historical Review 66 Circulation figures are in Fesch, Constantinople, 64. 107, no. 3 (June 2002): 768–796; Edhem Eldem, “The Ottoman Empire and Orientalism: An Awkward 67 The best example of a publication of postcards as an Relationship,” in François Pouillon and Jean-Claude editorial project is Mert Sandalcı, The Postcards of Max Vatin, eds., After Orientalism: Critical Perspectives on Fruchtermann (Istanbul: Koçbank, 2000). Western Agency and Eastern Re-appropriations (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 89–102. 68 Just a few examples: Osman Köker, ed., 100 Yıl Önce Türkiye’de Ermeniler (Istanbul: Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, 73 “Établissement thermal de Coury les Bains [Yalova],” 2005); Osman Köker, ed., Orlando Carlo Calumeno postcard published by Max Fruchtermann, dated 17 Koleksiyonu’ndan kartpostallar ve Vital Cuinet’in July 1315 (29 July 1899). EE. istatistikleri ve anlatımlarıyla bir zamanlar İzmir (Istanbul: Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, 2009); Mehmet Mazak, Kartpostallarda İstanbul, Istanbul with Postcards 74 L’Illustration 3417 (22 August 1908): 126. (Istanbul: İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür 75 There is no precise way to quantify the production AŞ, [2008]); Fouad Debbas, Beirut, Our Memory: A or consumption of these cards, but searches on Guided Tour with Postcards from the Collection of Fouad specialized sales websites give an idea of possible Debbas (Beirut: Naufal Group, [1986]); Lale Gökman, numbers. On www.delcampe.net in January 2015, for Manastır’ın Ortasında Var bir Havuz . . . Kartpostallarla example, five postcards of Sultan Reşad were offered, bir Osmanlı Şehrinin Hikâyesi, A Pool Lies at the Heart and twenty-seven of Enver. of Monastir: Tale of an Ottoman City through Postcards (Istanbul: Denizler Kitabevi, 2011); Kostas Kopsidas, Hoi Hevraioi tēs Thessalonikēs: mesa apo tis kart-postal, 76 In this image Enver wears exactly the same outfit as in a studio photograph by Boghos Tarkoulian, dated 12 1886–1917, Les Juifs de Thessalonique: À travers les February 1324 (25 February 1909); it seems likely that cartes-postales, 1886–1917, The Jews of Thessaloniki the postcard, originated from the same or a similar through Postcards, 1886–1917 (Thessaloniki: studio session; Bahattin Öztuncay, Hâtıra-i Uhuvvet: K. Kopsidas, 1992); Murat Uğurluer, Kartpostal Portre Fotoğraflarının Cazibesi, 1846–1950 (Istanbul: ve Fotokartlarla Gaziantep (Gaziantep: M.A.P., Aygaz, 2005), 210–211. 2008); Fikret Yılmaz and Sabri Yetkin, eds., İzmir Kartpostalları 1900: Izmir in Postcards 1900 (Izmir: İzmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür Yayını, 2003).

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The Sellié children, Zizi, Gilberte, Clothilde, Marie-Thérèse, Robert and Andrée with their governess (?) Miss Norinthong (?), leaving their residence at Boyacıköy, 6 August 1905. Sellié family album, ÖMKC.

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ABDÜLHAMİD AS PATERFAMILIAS Insistent scholarship on Abdülhamid as the creator of an “imperial self-portrait” through image-making based on photographic albums1 has tended to overshadow the less spectacular ways in which the sovereign has tried to make use of photography. One particularly significant oversight is the album he sent to Queen Victoria in 1878, the existence of which can be traced thanks to a translation of the British sovereign’s letter of thanks.2 Further research reveals that although said album could not be located at the Royal Collection, the Royal Archives have preserved enough of the correspondence to allow for a reconstitution of the event, including the album’s probable contents.3 “I have the honor of presenting Your Majesty with a testimony of my feelings of sincere and respectful friendship for Her with this album containing the photographs of my children and of those of other members of my dynasty.”4 The Sultan also mentioned his intention of sending these boys to England once they had acquired a preliminary education, in order to receive proper military training. From these details one can infer that the album must have included the portraits of seven young princes: Abdülaziz’s sons Abdülmecid (10), Mehmed Şevket (6), and Mehmed Seyfeddin (4); Burhaneddin Efendi’s son İbrahim Tevfik (4); Reşad Efendi’s son Mehmed Ziyaeddin (5); and Abdülhamid’s own sons Mehmed Selim (8) and Mehmed Abdülkadir (6 months). The photographs of all but one of these princes can be found with the imprint of Basile Kargopoulo, who became court photographer in March 1878.5 Evidently, the newly appointed artist’s first task had been to organize a photographic coverage of the Sultan’s extended family.6 Among these, Abdülhamid had picked a handful, based on age and gender, to include in an

album dedicated to Queen Victoria, thus playing the family card, while at the same time committing to a politically flattering educational plan. The Queen’s response suggests that the Sultan had struck the right chord. Calling him her “good brother,” she complimented him on this charming gift, noted that she would be pleased to assist the princes upon their arrival in England, and expressed her sympathy for his recent trials, discreetly referring to the disastrous Ottoman defeat at the hands of Russia. Abdülhamid’s “family album” stands as a reminder of the “soft” diplomacy that characterized the early years of his reign, soon to be replaced by the ambitious propaganda of his autocracy. EE

Photographs (clockwise from top left) Princes Abdülmecid, Mehmed Şevket, Mehmed Seyfeddin, Mehmed Abdülkadir (with Şeker Ahmed Pasha), Mehmed Selim and İbrahim Tevfik. 1 On the famous “Abdülhamid albums,” see Gavin, ed., Imperial Self-Portrait. 2 BOA, Y. EE. 63/3, 19 September 1878. 3 Royal Archives, RA VIC/MAIN/H/24/47, Sultan Abdülhamid’s letter and its French translation, 4 Ramazan 1295 /20 August 1294 (1 September 1878) and RA VIC/MAIN/H/24/61, copy of Queen Victoria’s answer in French, 19 September 1878. This material has been obtained and is mentioned here with permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 4 The French translation has “children” where the original Turkish text says “sons.” 5 The missing prince among this age group is Reşad Efendi’s son Mehmed Ziyaeddin. 6 One can identify at least 15 such portraits, including 5 princesses and 4 older princes, followed by 32 portraits of statesmen and dignitaries (Öztuncay, Vasilaki Kargopulo, 140– 153; 156–187).

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BOOKISH PORTRAITS Nineteenth-century studio photography is known for its frequent recourse to backdrops, furniture, and accessories. The four photographs selected here have in common their use of one of the most symbolic accessories, books.

volumes. The two titles were ostensibly picked from the Shiite tradition: Nahju’lBelagha (Way of Eloquence), a tenth-century collection of sermons and sayings attributed to the Caliph Ali, and Divan-i Ali, a collection of poems also attributed to him.

In the first photograph by Abdullah Frères, Sultan Abdülaziz’s firstborn son Yusuf İzzeddin Efendi (1857–1916) is depicted in a pose of nonchalant reverie, his elbow resting on a small book placed on a heavily ornate desk. The identical furniture and accessories in a portrait of Midhat Pasha (p. 87) betray a studio setting.

The last photograph differs from the rest in many ways. The sitter is a young woman, possibly non-Muslim. The studio is modest, even a bit shabby, with a plain blind barely hiding a rough wall, well-worn furniture, ordinary rugs, and makeshift flowerpots. Wearing her best dress and her hair carefully groomed, the young woman holds a fan in her right hand and gracefully uses her left hand to flaunt her earring and rings. On the table, three books are piled with a small pocket watch placed on top. One can recognize the largest volume: Şemseddin Sami Fraschery’s Kamus-ı Türki, the most widely used dictionary of the time. This may be taken as an indication that the books were part and parcel of the studio props and had no real connection to the sitter.

In the second photograph, the elderly Üryanizade Ahmed Esad Efendi (1813–1889), Sheikhulislam from 1878 to his death, is shown sitting in a corner of his garden. An armchair has been brought out for this purpose and a wobbly garden table offers support to his arm and to three large leatherbound volumes, with a bunch of cut roses placed before them. While the books cannot be identified, their shape and size reveal a traditional – probably religious – content, perhaps in manuscript form. Found in the same envelope as the images of Abidin the Snitch (p. 234), and despite the absence of any indication, the third sitter can safely be identified as Ali Suavi (1838– 1878) during his exile in Paris (1869–1876). His clerical costume, prayer beads, unruly hair and beard, and thin-rimmed glasses define the political activist and religious reformer he was. The Parisian studio setting is extremely austere, reduced to a wooden stand upon which are placed three volumes. Suavi seems to have camouflaged what were probably French books by attaching two sheets of paper bearing Arabic inscriptions in emulation of the Ottoman and Islamic tradition of writing titles on the side of

EE

Photographs (clockwise from top left) Prince Yusuf İzzeddin Efendi, Abdullah Frères, ca 1865, ÖMKC; Sheikhulislam Üryanizade Ahmed Esad Efendi, ca 1885, Cengiz Kahraman Collection; anonymous young woman, EE; Ali Suavi, Photographie César, Paris, ca 1870, BOA, Y. EE. 57/1.2.

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BAD BOYS The first systematic attempt to have convicts photographed seems to date from April 1888, when instructions were issued to ensure that individuals sentenced to death or to hard labor for life be photographed and that their crime be inscribed beneath the image.1 Considering the costs of photographing prison inmates were still being discussed some five years later, it is likely that the practice spread rather slowly and was limited to a number of prisons.2 Among approximately 500 albums kept at the Istanbul University Central Library, only six are devoted entirely to convicts, which suggests that the photographic documentation never really spread to the point of including the entire prison population of the empire.3 The harvesting of images may not have been systematic, but the result is fascinating and intriguing. Despite possible inspiration from the West, Ottoman convict photographs were far from providing the kind of anthropometric detail that characterized proper Bertillonage.4 To start with, the standard procedure of the double mug shot, consisting of a facial and profile view of the subject, does not seem to have played any significant role. The images hence had little to offer to the student of physiognomy and anthropometry; in fact, these incomplete mug shots were not even the standard format for convicts, as many were depicted in full length or three quarters, sitting or standing. Such poses allowed Amet the Lame to stare defiantly into the camera, and İbrahim the Albanian, caught armed and wounded by the army, to mimic prayer. As to the theatrical pose of Spiro from Goritsa, the absence of chains and shackles suggests that this may have been a studio photograph – worthy of our “folkloric” sample (p. 215 – taken before his arrest and conveniently added to the album.5

The oft-repeated observation that the Sultan decided on pardoning criminals by looking at their photographs, already based on thin evidence,6 has been used as proof that the Sultan and his administration engaged in a Western-inspired scientific form of anthropometric recording. The nature of the photographs at hand suggests that this process may have been much more akin to the tradition of physiognomy (ilm-ı kıyafet) as had been practiced by the Ottoman elite for centuries. EE

Photographs (clockwise from top left) Tanakaoğlu Kara Ömer, Amet the Lame, Spiro son of Nicholas, and İbrahim the Albanian, İÜMK 91290-0005, 0108, 0122. 1 BOA, DH. MKT. 1499/70, 16 Receb 1305 / 8 April 1888. On Ottoman prisons, see Kent F. Schull, Prisons in the Late Ottoman Empire. Microcosms of Modernity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), particularly 114-120 on photography. 2 BOA, DH. MKT. 2023/71, 2 Cemaziyülevvel 1310 / 22 November 1892; MV 74/52, 26 Şaban 1310 / 15 March 1893; BEO 176/13162, 7 Ramazan 1310 / 25 March 1893. 3 The seven albums are numbered 91285, 91287, 91290, 91291, 91292 and 91293. 4 Alphonse Bertillon, Identification anthropométrique: Instructions signalétiques ([Paris]: Ministère de l’intérieur, 1885) and La Photographie judiciaire, avec un appendice sur la classification et l’identification anthropométriques (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1890). 5 On the Balkan tradition of staged portraits of “heroes,” see Baleva, “Revolution in the Darkroom,” 378–388. 6 The argument was first brought forward by Engin Çizgen, but within the context of an exceptional pardon on the occasion of his Silver Jubilee, and with no documentary reference (Photography in the Ottoman Empire, 23).

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PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE SERVICE OF ART Can one write the history of arts and sciences and, more generally, of culture in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire without referring to Osman Hamdi Bey? This may well be impossible, judging from the existing literature. Yet despite our criticism of the powerful distortion exerted by “Hamdimania,” we, too, have failed to work our way around this iconic figure and have had to refer several times to his ubiquitous Costumes populaires.

found in a number of his paintings, such as Inside the Green Mosque (1890), Clerics outside the mosque (n.d.), and Cutting edge of the scimitar (1908). His son’s photograph is reproduced in Young emir reading (1905). As for his wife, although there is no known canvas reproducing this particular stance, its style fits well the genre of the interior/harem scenes he produced in the 1880s. EE

Here is one more concession to this phenomenon, but hopefully a justifiable one. Hamdi’s take on modernity had a necessary link to photography as a means of recording and disseminating images. The Costumes populaires album was simply one early example of it, soon to be followed by other major photographic ventures. His position as director of the Imperial Museum was particularly conducive to such enterprises. In 1882, a year after his appointment, he signed a contract with Pascal Sébah to have the entire museum collections photographed.1 The following year, he went on a survey of the recently discovered tumulus of Antiochus of Commagene, on Mount Nemrud, from which he returned with a harvest of about a hundred glass plate negatives.2 These three photographs are examples of yet another aspect of Hamdi’s career that benefited greatly from photography. As a painter with a marked predilection for Oriental/Orientalist scenes, he often resorted to photography as a visual reference for backgrounds as well as characters in his works. The poses here are of himself as a mendicant dervish, of his wife Marie as a harem inmate, and of their son Edhem as a young man reading. The penciled grid on his own portrait is a reminder of the quadrillage technique he used to copy the image on a canvas. His own posture can be

Photographs (clockwise from top left) Osman Hamdi, Marie/Naile Hamdi, and their son Edhem Hamdi, EE. 1 Edhem Eldem, Mendel-Sébah: Müze-i Hümayun’u Belgelemek – Mendel-Sébah: Documenting the Imperial Museum (Istanbul: İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri, 2014), 30–36. 2 Osman Hamdy Bey and Osgan Effendi, Le tumulus de NemroudDagh. Voyage, description, inscriptions avec plans et photographies (Constantinople: F. Loeffler, 1883). For a complete inventory of Hamdi’s photographs during this trip, see, Edhem Eldem, Le voyage à Nemrud Dağı d’Osman Hamdi Bey et Osgan Efendi (Istanbul-Paris: IFEA-De Boccard, 2010).

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A TASTE FOR FOLKLORE Osman Hamdi and Marie de Launay’s Costumes populaires (1873) was a modernist and already nostalgic homage to the diversity of races and creeds in the Ottoman Empire as expressed through the wealth and variety of popular costumes from the Balkans to the Arab lands. Every plate thus staged “natives” in their traditional garb with long explanations as to the quality and cost of the outfits. The album was designed to impress Western audiences on the occasion of the 1873 Vienna Universal Exposition. However, the phenomenon had a wider range of uses; these four photographs have been selected for their similar use of costumes from the area of Albania and the Epirus, but in astonishingly different contexts. Plate XIX of the Costumes populaires displayed three men from the province of Ioannina: from left to right, a peasant and two townsmen, one poor and the other middle-class. They all wear similar garments with differing degrees of fineness: a fez or skullcap, a vest (yelek), a jacket (cepken), a shirt (mintan), a skirt (fistan), gaiters (dizlik), rawhide shoes (çarık), and a wide felt cloak (kebe).

sentenced to death for having engaged in many murders by way of brigandage.” The man in the next photograph, standing by a fake wrought iron railing in front of an artistically designed backdrop of clouds, was evidently better off than the two Albanian convicts. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to imagine that he was an “authentic” Albanian who had decided to wear his best to have his portrait taken. His were a different kind of shackles, as he worked for the Cavalla branch of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, whose administration made it a point to dress its guards and underlings in fancy livery and, whenever appropriate, in some kind of “national” costume. The last “folkloric” photograph is the most playful of all, as it involves no obligation but only fancy dressing. In fact, what makes the image extraordinary is the identity of the two men: Princes Ömer Hilmi (1886–1935, seated) and Mehmed Ziyaeddin (1873–1938, reclining), the sons of Sultan Mehmed V Reşad. They accompanied their father during his tour of Rumelia in June 1911, and this photograph was taken in Monastir by local photographers Yanaki and Milton Manakis. EE

The next photograph from the Abdülhamid albums, depicting two men in somewhat similar outfits, seems to have been taken in a provincial studio. Indeed, the faded palm tree motifs on the background screen and the “rustic” touch of hay on the ground are typical features of lower-end photographic businesses. Yet the most striking difference is not in the setting but in the presence of an unexpected accessory: both men have their ankles shackled to a heavy chain disappearing under their worn cloaks. The handwritten caption explains it all: “Yani Niko and Yorghi Yani Gogo from Leskovik,

Photographs (clockwise from top left) Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, pl.XIX, İÜMK, 91290-0096; Album of Sultan Reşad's visit to Monastir (Bitola), June 1911, Manaki Brothers, ÖMKC; Imperial Ottoman Bank staff photographs (PHIN), SALT Research, Ottoman Bank Archives.

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ORIENTALIST REALITY The “local” scenes on Ottoman postcards are known to have been staged for the enjoyment of tourists seeking exotic thrills. This is particularly true of the omnipresent images depicting “Turkish ladies” in their typical clothes. This particular postcard of “women in Turkish costume” published by Moïse Israilovitch (MJC brand) is no exception. Yet there is something special about this particular postcard: the names added above each of the three women, which can be read from right to left as “Nehar,” “Lutfiye Ablam” (my big sister Lutfiye) and “… Ablam” (my big sister …).1 This identification of the three women goes against all notions of staging and fabrication. The postcard’s text may help us understand better:

Evidently, it depicts a humorous way of using this postcard as a mock portrait of three real women. This playful use by local women of a postcard designed for foreigners opens up the complex and multilayered relationship between image and text, publisher and sender, intended and actual use and illustrates how fiction and reality can end up converging. EE

“My dear and beloved sister from the palace,2 Let me first kiss you on both cheeks and pray to the Lord that you should be in good health. My dear sister, if you only knew how sad I was that day when I went back home, I just could not comfort my soul from having parted with you for a few days. What could I do, I ended up getting used to it, my dear sister. If you miss the way you were at the palace, my dear sister, here is something to remind you of it. I was going to write much more but there is no space left. Nehar. I respectfully kiss my uncle’s wife’s and Granny’s hands and kiss your bright eyes, Madam.” The text is written in the same hand as the names on the image, and the signature strangely echoes the name given to the woman in the striped cloak on the right. The postcard is clearly penned by this woman, Nehar, and addressed to another one as a reminder of her days at some palace.

"Women in Turkish costume," postcard published by Moïse Israilovitch, Constantinople (MJC), uncirculated, Cengiz Kahraman Collection. 1 The third name is illegible. 2 Some colloquial expressions are practically impossible to translate. “From the palace” stands for the adjective “Saraylı,” a title given to women who worked in a palatial household. “Sister” (abla) is a term of endearment used with a slightly older person, regardless of any real family ties.

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PERSONALIZED PHOTO CARDS "Istanbul, 3 August 1902 The Golden Horn My dear and esteemed Sir, I am grateful for the kindness and appreciation you have shown me following Salaheddin’s simple request. The postcards you have been kind enough to send me have arrived. They have all immediately fetched a place of honor in my collection. Of course, you should know that every time I parade! my collection, I shall remember you, and that contrary to what the last philosophers of our age claim, I shall prove that there are still in our times persons of conscience and worthy of consideration. Nevertheless, there are only a few postcards I can send you by this mail. As they were all known to me, these were the only ones at hand. My objective is to make sure that I send you views of Istanbul which are not readily available on the market. Indeed, that is the case with these two. One cannot even find a photograph of the other one.

in the lower left corner, this was a specialty of the Société Lumière, in Lyons, owned by the famous Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, and their father Antoine. Rifat Osman (1874-1933) was not just anyone. He was one of the prominent radiologists of the time, but also an amateur historian with a predilection for the history of the city of Edirne.1 His modernity shows in the general tone of the text, in his use of a Gregorian date, and in his rather elegant French script. The postcard was addressed to one Celaleddin Bey at the Ottoman consulate in Singapore, possibly the consular secretary.2 It was mailed from the German post office on August 3 and it transited through Alexandria and Suez on August 12 and 13 before reaching its fınal destination exactly one month later, on September 3. EE

Doctor Rifat Osman" This is a perfect illustration of the upper end of postcard exchanges and collecting. While the great majority of such images circulated between total strangers with only short expressions of civility, the sender of the current postcard was clearly engaged in a much more sophisticated process whereby he commented on views he had carefully picked for their interest and rarity. The nature of the object adheres well to its particular use. Technically speaking, the object is not a postcard but a photo card (carte photo). Contrary to postcards, which were published in thousands or millions of copies, photocards were personally selected photographs, reproduced on preprinted photographic paper to be used like postcards. As attested by the small print

Photo card of the Golden Horn printed on Lumière paper, mailed on 3 August 1902, EE. 1 Ahmet Güner Sayar, “Rifat Osman,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 35 (Istanbul: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2008), 105–106.

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ABIDIN THE SNITCH Among the Ottoman State Archives’ rich holdings is an envelope containing 26 photographs.1 However, there seems to be no logic bringing these images together. In all likelihood, this was simply a random collection of photographs found at Yıldız Palace in 1909, during the searches conducted by the Young Turks following Abdülhamid’s fall in late April. Two of the photographs are particularly intriguing. Numbered 9 and 10, they are obviously connected, as one can easily recognize the same characters on both images. On number 9, three men in military uniform are lined up, facing the camera, standing to attention, and saluting with their palms turned outward. The setting seems to have been a garden, and one can make out about half a dozen men, in traditional (rural?) garb, sitting in very relaxed fashion on top of a small mount behind the three soldiers.

circumstances surrounding these two very odd images. The setting is most probably Yıldız Palace, Abdülhamid’s residence and working quarters. The building may have been an ancillary one: the stables, the shooting range, or simply the service entrance to one of the many kiosks that made up the complex. Given that context, it seems reasonable to assume that the three men may have been in the Imperial Guard, or perhaps in one of the Zouave regiments. Their strange poses remain a mystery, as do the reasons for the singling out of one of the men as an informer. Nevertheless, it does seem obvious that the shots were taken in the tradition of a photographic inventory, thus constituting a puzzling addition to Abdülhamid’s famous photograph collection. EE

Photograph number 10 most likely dates from the same time. It features two of the three soldiers on the previous image, again standing in a rather stiff pose, but now facing towards the left of the camera and loosely pointing their revolvers in the direction of some invisible target. The men pose in front of a wooden staircase leading to a galleried building. Their revolvers are strangely attached by the grip to a leather strip around their necks, a detail evident on the previous image where they are safely tucked in their holsters. A small label glued to the cardboard mount of the photographs identifies the man on the right in both images, marked with a (1): “Muhbir Zenci Abidin” or “Black Abidin, the Snitch.” One of the most remarkable features of these men is that they all appear to be of African origin. But beyond this point one can only speculate on the meaning and

Photographs BOA, Y. EE. 57/1, 9-10. 1 BOA, Y. EE. 57/1.

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FORBIDDEN KITSCH The frequency with which postcards were targeted by informants, by censors, and by the regime itself is a good indication of how powerful and ubiquitous this new iconographic medium had become by the turn of the century. In fact, rather than efficient and successful restrictions, these measures need to be understood as a series of desperate attempts at controlling the uncontrollable. The existence of a regime of exception – the capitulations – with respect to postal services made it practically impossible for the government to prevent the circulation of postcards deemed inappropriate. The matter was further complicated by the fact that many of the publishers of such items, as well as their users, were foreign nationals, protected by the same kind of extraterritoriality and impunity. Occasional efforts by the administration to obtain diplomatic support for their photographic witch hunts were undermined by the tendency of overzealous censors to abuse such measures by widening their scope beyond reasonable limits. In 1903, when the government informed them of their intention to ban the circulation through foreign post offices of postcards bearing the sacred names of God and images of the Kaaba, the legations replied that while they agreed in principle, they had noted that the Customs Administration had gone so far as to ban images of fruit vendors and street peddlers.1 A few years later, in 1905, the government was faced with yet another case involving unwanted images disseminated through postcards. Luckily, as the administrative file preserved copies of the incriminated postcards, we know exactly what these looked like. Two of them used the same (and rather kitsch) motif of a windblown sail decorated with a colored photograph, one of which showed two veiled women chatting at

a window, and the other a kneeling Muslim priest reading from a book, presumably the Koran. The third postcard was of a very different and rather strange composition, depicting the front page of an Armenian newspaper, the center of which was torn to allow a peek into the interior of Hagia Sophia. The administrative correspondence explained that these three cards were printed and sold by the Zellich printing house in Galata, and that since the owner was a foreign national, it seemed impossible to prevent their production and circulation by any means other than the intercession of the relevant embassy. The crime imputed to the publisher was, as usual, the dissemination of the image of Muslim women and of the interior of mosques.z Interestingly, no mention was made of the (rather incongruous) association of Hagia Sophia with the Armenian daily Arevelk (East). EE

Postcards BOA, DH. MKT. 983/4, 17 June 1905. 1 BOA, BEO 1649/123625, 28 Zilhicce 1318 / 5 April 1317 / 18 April 1903. 2 BOA, DH. MKT. 983/4, 4 June 1321 / 17 June 1905.

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UNITY IN DIVERSITY “Unity in diversity” – la variété dans l’unité – was a motto used by Osman Hamdi and Marie de Launay to qualify the great variety of costume displayed in their famous album.1 Borrowed from Leibniz’s description of the perfection of Nature, this popular saying was often used to describe the virtues and strength of bringing difference together to form a harmonious whole. The motto could have applied perfectly to the Imperial Ottoman Bank, which was indeed one of the strongest yet also most diverse institutions in the empire. Hybrid from the perspective of its mixed capital and allegiances, this venerable bank had a particularly diverse profile with respect to its staff, traversed by national, ethnic, religious, cultural, and social cleavages. The value the bank attached to photographic portraiture as a means of identification of its employees resulted in an amazing sample of full-length photographs of some 6,000 individuals recruited between the 1890s and 1920s. Browsing through these portraits, one discovers to what extent body language and status could be correlated, as suggested by the difference between underlings stiffly standing to attention (3), even when photographed with some decorum (6), while executives made it a point to mimic relaxed and sophisticated poses (9). As employees posted in a same town generally had their picture taken at the same studio, repetitions of backdrops and props could strangely bring further emphasis to sartorial and other differences. A kavass in fancy folkloric garb and a clerk in the classic “hand-in-waistcoat” pose2 could share an identical “rustic” backdrop in a Beirut studio (1, 2); yet in Damascus, the photographer seems to have wished to add emphasis to the difference between a modest underling

and his superior by gracing the latter’s “hand-in” portrait with a plaster statuette (4, 5). Some studios were particularly dominant in their treatment of the sitter; when Boghos Tarkoulian’s Studio Phébus carried out a photographic campaign for the Stamboul branch of the bank, it leveled all the employees by apparently forcing them to adopt the same pose, standing stiffly in a dark suit with a bowler hat in hand (7, 8). Such large and internally consistent samples are a unique source of information on the most mundane aspects of portrait photography. By cross-tabulating “objective” indications such as the identity of the sitter and of the studio with “subjective” criteria such as pose and costume, one is likely to find rules of practice and patterns of behavior that remain invisible or speculative in individual photographs.

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Photographs Imperial Ottoman Bank staff photographs (PHIN), SALT Research, Ottoman Bank Archives. 1 BOA, Y. EE. 57/1. Hamdy and de Launay, Costumes populaires, 6. 2 Arline Meyer, “Re-Dressing Classical Statuary: The EighteenthCentury Hand-in-Waistcoat Portrait,” Art Bulletin, 77/1 (March 1995): 45–63.

Front Cover The New Galata Bridge, Sébah & Joaillier, 25 May 1912, Ömer M. Koç Collection.

From its birth in 1839, photography has participated in modernity as much as it has symbolized it. Its capacity to record and display, and its claim to accuracy and truth intricately linked the new technology to the dynamism of the modern world. The Ottoman Empire embraced photography with great enthusiasm. The impact and meaning of photography were further reinforced by the thrust of modernization and Westernization of the Tanzimat movement. By the turn of the century, photography in the Ottoman lands had become a standard feature of everyday life, public media, and the state apparatus.

The visual world we live in today was born some 150 years ago. Camera Ottomana is both a homage to, and a critical assessment of, the local dimension of one of the most potent and transformative technological inventions of the recent past.

Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1914 Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire 1840-1914

This exhibition explores some of the most striking aspects of the close connection between photography and modernity in the specificity of the Ottoman Empire. Much of the material concerns the display of modernity through photography, as was so often the case in the photographs and albums commissioned by the sultans to showcase the empire for Western audiences. Nevertheless, modernity was often embedded in the photographic act, transforming it into a common and mundane practice. Be it in the form of images disseminated through the illustrated press, postcards sent out to family members or anonymous collectors, portraits presented to friends and acquaintances, or pictures taken of employees and convicts, photography had started to invade practically every sphere of public and private life.

75 TL


Texts by Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, Bahattin Öztuncay, Frances Terpak & Peter Louis Bonfitto

Powerful Images

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