Ottoman Photography of the Late Nineteenth Century: An ‘Innocent’ Modernism?

Shaw, Wendy M. K.

doi:10.1080/03087290802582996

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…This is an excellent example of the "flat" photography of the Hamidian period, to use Wendy Shaw's term, in which, she argues, "people are types". 41 As shall be seen from an actual performance by this band, the overwhelming insipidity of the ceremonial freezes and ossifies the very crowds who come to view them, creating live mirrors of these staged scenes.…”

Section: Meeting the Bandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sparks of Happenstance: Photographs, Public Celebrations, and the Ottoman Military Band of Jerusalem

Talbot¹

2018

Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association

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This paper explores the depiction of public celebration in the late Hamidian period in Ottoman Jerusalem through the relationship between textual and photographic sources, and between state performers and the viewing public. The joy of public celebrations on the sultan's birthday and accession day conveyed in the Ottoman Turkish and Hebrew press was at odds with formal, flat photographs of the occasion, but in fact shared that aesthetic through its formulaic tropes and language.A key part of the narratives of these occasions in Jerusalem was the performance of music by the military band of the garrison. Through a close reading of these and other images, the uniform images and narratives of these public events of the state can be penetrated, and snapshots of discord, emotion, and reaction emerge that show performances to be perhaps cacophonous affairs, and the attending crowds a part of the scenery rather than active participants. As such, this paper will consider the role of these photographs in reconstructing both the experiential and political atmospheres of these formal state occasions. In particular, a stereographic image of a concert of the Jerusalem band in 1903 permits an alternative reading of these occasions. Using the chance details captured in the shot, the value of close readings of photographs as microhistories can be found in exposing narratives beyond those peddled by the state, and the flaws and tensions of the relationship between ruler and ruled thus becomes more readily apparent. * I am grateful to Lauren Banko, Zeinab Azarbadegan, Victoria Carolan, and Hifzah Tariq for their critical read-throughs of earlier drafts of this paper, and would like to thank the organizers of the 'Visual Sources for Ottoman History' workshop for their generous support and encouragement that enabled this research to go forward, and the participants at that workshop for providing such an exciting exchange of ideas. I would also like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments, critiques, and recommendations. Finally, hat tip to Dikla Braier for spending so many hours sitting and staring at these photographs with me.Fünkchen Zufall]", something in the moment of the capture of the image that tells us something interesting, subversive, or profound. 2 Yet those insights within a photograph can be easily missed if the purpose of that image is merely illustrative, simple ornamentation to a more (supposedly) complex and analytical text. The photograph as a historical source is so much more than that. The Ottoman writer Ahmed Resim, who was a major contributor to the cultural and literary journal Servet-i Fünun (Treasure of Knowledge), wrote a reflection on photography in that journal in a piece called 'Fotoğrafım' (My Photograph), published in 1891. His reflection on the experience of being photographed is fascinating: "My physical being, in a split-second, left a thick shadow on the negative plate. Fifteen days later, there was a visible image of a complete likeness of my facial ...

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Section: Meeting the Bandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sparks of Happenstance: Photographs, Public Celebrations, and the Ottoman Military Band of Jerusalem

Talbot¹

2018

Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association

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“…The importance of photography for the Ottoman rulers was twofold: firstly, it aided control and containment of an empire that was increasingly showing signs of unrest and revolt and, secondly, it provided an opportunity for dialogue with the West in demonstrating the modernity of the Empire, its progressiveness and the co-existence within its borders of the various ethnic groups of the Empire (Allen 1984, Özendes 1998, Woodward 2003, Shaw 2009, Çelik and Eldem 2015, Ersoy 2016, Gursel 2016. Sultan Abdulhamid II's albums provide an example of this.…”

Section: Parallelotopia I -Photography In Istanbul In the Late 19 Th mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, photography in the Ottoman Empire did not look to existing genres as did contemporary photography in Europe. Instead, it provided what Shaw (2009) calls the ‘innocent eye’, coupling the technology of photography with the nineteenth century positivist drive for information (p. 80).…”

Section: Parallelotopia I – Photography In Istanbul In the Late Ninetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parallelotopia: Ottoman transcultural memory assemblages in contemporary art practices from the Middle East

Koureas

2019

Memory Studies

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This article engages with the conversations taking place in the photographic space between then and now, memory and photography, and with the symbiosis and ethnic violence between different ethnic communities in the ex-Ottoman Empire. It questions the role of photography and contemporary art in creating possibilities for coexistence within the mosaic formed by the various groups that made up the Ottoman Empire. The essay aims to create parallelotopia, spaces in the present that work in parallel with the past and which enable the dynamic exchange of transcultural memories. Drawing on memory theory, the article shifts these debates forward by adopting the concept of ‘assemblage’. The article concentrates on the aesthetics of photographs produced by Armenian photographic studios in Istanbul during the late nineteenth century and their relationship to the present through the work of contemporary artists Klitsa Antoniou, Joanna Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige and Etel Adnan as well as photographic exhibitions organised by the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, Athens, Greece.

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“…Yüzyıl Batı evreninin Oryantalist merakına dönük oldukları için bu sergiler kapsam dışında bırakılmıştır. Ayrıca 1893 Şikago Sergisi'nde sergilenen (Shaw, 2009;Deringil, 2014;Woodward, 2003) ve daha sonra ABD Kongre Kütüphanesi'ne sunulan (Eldem, 2015a) (Pamuk, 2009) Osmanlı ekonomisine zarar vermeye devam etmişse de bu anlaşmalar Osmanlı Devleti'nin ilerleyen yıllarda düzenlenecek olan uluslararası sergilere katılımının önünü açmıştır (Clark, 1974 (Pemsel, 1989). Farklı kültürlerin "aydınlanmadan kalma bir sistemle" (Çelik, 1992: 3-5) (Çelik, 1992).…”

Section: Elbi̇se-i̇ Osmani̇ye: a Creative Industry Sample In 1873 Viennaunclassified

Elbi̇se-İ Osmani̇ye: 1873 Vi̇yana Uluslararasi Sergi̇si̇ Nde Bi̇r Yaratici Endüstri̇ Örneği̇

Kahraman¹,

Gülaçtı²

2016

BEYK

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Ottoman Photography of the Late Nineteenth Century: An ‘Innocent’ Modernism?

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Sparks of Happenstance: Photographs, Public Celebrations, and the Ottoman Military Band of Jerusalem

Sparks of Happenstance: Photographs, Public Celebrations, and the Ottoman Military Band of Jerusalem

Parallelotopia: Ottoman transcultural memory assemblages in contemporary art practices from the Middle East

Elbi̇se-İ Osmani̇ye: 1873 Vi̇yana Uluslararasi Sergi̇si̇ Nde Bi̇r Yaratici Endüstri̇ Örneği̇

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