Changing the Lens: An Ottoman Response to Orientalist Photography

Photograph from the Abdülhamid collection, Library of Congress

Though some Middle Eastern photographers—such as Pascal Sébah, an Assyrian-Armenian based in Istanbul—could be just as guilty as Westerners of producing images that perpetuated half-truths and stereotypes, the problematic nature of Orientalist photography is not a new observation. It was also recognized at the time of its creation. No less a figure than Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II (1842-1918) commented that most photographs taken by or for Europeans “vilify and mock” Islamic peoples “by showing them in a vulgar and demeaning light.”

In 1894, Abdülhamid presented a massive collection of 1,819 photographs in 51 large-format albums to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. A similar collection went to the British Library in London. Both sets portrayed how the Ottoman Empire, in stark contrast to the Orientalist view, was rapidly modernizing, at least in some places.

The images show a well-equipped army and navy; hospitals, factories, government buildings, and state-funded schools; police squads and fire brigades; and railroad stations, streetcar lines, and up-to-date port facilities. There are dozens of images of students, including girls, not only in Turkey but also other parts of the empire. Nearly all the students, and most notably the girls, wear modern, Western clothing, and even those who wear regional garments seem to be saying that their traditional lifestyle is not a barrier to modern education.

At the same time, the albums portray historic sites—palaces, mosques, mausoleums—perhaps to emphasize that the Ottoman Empire was maintaining a sense of heritage and connection to its past without being unchanging, as outsiders in the nineteenth century tended to see “the Orient.” 

Explore the entire Abdülhamid collection on the Library of Congress website via the link below.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/abdul-hamid-ii/

“School in Upper Egypt,” by Leopold Carl Müller. Reproduced in Egypt: Heliogravures after Original Views. Berlin: Cosmos Art Publishing Co., 1893.

This painting, by an Austrian artist noted for his Orientalist scenes, depicts a school in Egypt (then part of the Ottoman Empire) and is an example of the kind of unflattering imagery that inspired Sultan Abdülhamid II to commission two large sets of photographs showing how the empire was modernizing its educational system. Though it is easy to see from pictures like this why the sultan and others wanted to present a more positive counternarrative, were the images that they themselves favored also too selective? To what extent did they serve as propaganda, diverting attention from things they did not want outisders to see? Does the news media and tourist industry still produce similarly one-sided images today?