Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS)

Qajar Photography Conference

 

ABSTRACTS

*****

Women in Late Qajar Urban Society: The View From the Lens

R. Jackson Armstrong-Ingram

The documentary universe that allows us to attempt an understanding of the socio-cultural nexus of late Qajar Iran includes a rich body of iconographic sources: paintings and drawings; lithographs; engravings; and photographs. These various iconographic forms both interconnect with each other and exist in a broader context which includes the written sources with which most historians have more traditionally worked. This paper will consider some examples of photographs related to the situating of urban women within this socio-cultural nexus. Too frequently photographs have been used simply as 'illustrations' to enliven the presentation of a discussion founded on written sources. Here, photographs will be discussed as 'documents' in themselves that may be analysed in terms of their internal characteristics and their broader associations with the documentary universe.

The photographs to be considered will include formal portraits, andarun scenes, and the public urban sphere. The analysis will situate these images not only in their 'native' socio-cultural context, but also consider the homologies they present with the position of Western women. The positions of women in Iran and the West are generally presented as oppositional as if this were axiomatic. Wherever there is such a taken-for-granted through which sources tend to be viewed, it is useful to go behind it and reinterrogate the basis on which it rests.

 

*****

Orientalism, Self-Exoticism, and the Oriental Despot: Nasir ud-Din Shah  

Ali Behdad

My paper deals with Nasir-al Din Shah's photographs of his harem and the ways in which such self-representations are mediated by orientalist aesthetic modes. I will read a series of these photographs to address both the aesthetic dimensions of his work and the ideological implications of these representations. Among the issues that I will discuss is the notion of self-exoticism, an orientalist perception of oneself that enables the king to both empower himself as a king and fall into European ideologies of otherness.

*****

Photographic Hybridities: Sevruguin, Iran, and the West

Frederick N. Bohrer

The still embryonic study of Qajar photography is balanced between the two dominant, but competing, narratives of the history of photographic representation of "non-Western" cultures.   First, there is the ethnographic visual surveying of the land and its people, much like that accorded at the same period to such disparate locales as Egypt, the South Pacific, and Africa.  In this acount, photography is an objective recording instrument for a master archive of appearances and customs.  Second, however, is the more recent emphasis on the adjustment of photographic representation to local aesthetic and cultural norms.  This conception emphasises the subjectivity of photographic representation, as well as its multifarious local differences.  

My paper will be dedicated to showing how Qajar photography provides material to support each of these narratives.  Considering a range of photographs from those of (and by) Shah Nasr al-Din, to the commercial Tehran photographer Antoin Sevruguin, to some early photography by Western travellers, Qajar photography can be seen as balanced between these different views of photography as science and as art.  This situation highlights the diffuse and complex nature of 19th century Iranian culture.  It is complemented by prevailing Iranian attitudes toward photography, which were far less hostile than those found elsewhere in the Islamic world. But even as these works may largely correlate with the above narratives, they also provide a framework to consider the relation between the two in a larger perspective.  Qajar photography offers a variety of models of photographic agency, from official to commercial to private, which underwrites differing forms of photographic representation.  Thus not only did photography represent Iran but different kinds of photographs represented different kinds of Iranians.  In this sense, Qajar photography is an exemplary case, which begins to suggest the larger and more polyvalent range of photographic forms and functions beyond established models.

*****

Qajar Isfahan

Parisa Damandan

Ernst Hoeltzer (1835 Š 1911) was a German engineer who in 1863 signed up to help construct the first telegraph line across Persia, part of it a development program underwritten by the British to give direct communication with India and to open up new markets and sources of raw materials. Hoeltzer married to an Armenian girl in 1875 and permanently settled in new Julfa, Esfahan, he became an avid amateur photographer. He spent his spare time recording his surroundings with an encyclopedic eye. He also took detailed notes on customs, professions, the legal system, and practically every other aspect of his adopted land.

*****

Reflections on an Association for the Study of the Qajar Era

M.M. Eskandari-Qajar, President International Qajar Studies Association

The very mention of the name Qajar evokes strong emotions and responses, still, to this day. Much of it has to do with the way the Qajars left the scene of Persian politics. Much of it, too, has to do with the way they were portrayed by their successors, the Pahlavis. An association such as this, would have been almost unthinkable during the sixties and seventies of the last century, and even if individual imagination could have dreamed of such an association, the scholarly pull for it would not have existed or been considered prudent or necessary or even desirable. Things have definitely changed! But why an association dedicated to the study of the Qajar era, at a time when the tide of scholarship has changed already in the direction of a positive re-evaluation of this important period of Persian history? The answers are many. Some have to do with our particular relationship to the subject and the unique perspective we can bring to the study of that era. Others with the need to correct error and the greater need to explore a vast, rich and as yet unexplored ground of data and facts. Others still with timing and timeliness. With these issues in mind, we are hoping that our association will make a positive and lasting mark in the arena of Iranian Studies, and become a welcome addition to a field that has seen tremendous expansion in the last few decades.

*****

Ermakov as photographer and traveller

Dr. H de Herder

Background and training

Ermakov was born between 1845 and 1848 in Tbilisi, the son of Ludwig Cambaggio, an Italian architect, and a Georgian mother of Austrian descent, who was a noted pianist. She remarried with one Ermakov, whose name her son Dmitri took.

Among the schools where Ermakov as a young man received training was the Military Topographic Academy at Anunari, at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, 102 kilometres north of Tbilisi on Georgia's military highway. In Ermakov's estate various albums are to be found with photographs of this military highway and a number of views on and around this route. Most likely Ermakov took his first steps toward his future profession as photographer while at this academy. By that time every military academy in Europe had its photographic department, to serve the needs of cartography and for the production of maps and topographic files. Moreover, experiments were being done at these institutions with new photomechanical reproduction techniques for the production of map material. Photography was also found extremely well suited for reconnaissance in conflict situations and regions.

Ermakov left the military school toward the end of the 1860s. Shortly thereafter, around 1870, he opened his own photographic business in Tbilisi, the city of his birth and the capital of Russian-controlled Georgia. The studio was located on the Dvortsovaya, a street where various photography studios had been established for many years, and which drew many visitors. As early as 1846 a photography studio had been opened there, operated by Henry Haupt and I. Aleksandrovski. The photographers V. Khlamov and A. Roinashvili followed in the ensuing years. Ivanitski also set up there in 1863. Roinashvili was in fact the first photographer of Georgian extraction. He called his studio "Rembrandt," a good indication of his ambitions and the seriousness with which he practised his trade. It has been suggested that Ermakov took over some of Ivanitski's stock, particularly the many portraits of ethnic types, and also stock from Roinashvili. Such files of negatives were, after all, the most important business capital for photographic studios, and often remained in use for decades. It is thus quite possible that Ermakov took over an existing studio, and/or all or part of an older inventory. That was the accepted practice in this period, during which professional photography studios were taking off in a big way all over the world.

Several years after opening his studio Ermakov became a member of the French Sociˇtˇ de Photographie (SFP) in Paris, the most prestigious photographic association in Europe. Who had nominated Ermakov for membership - there was after all a strict admissions policy - is, alas, unknown. He submitted work for the SFP's biennial exhibition in 1874, reporting Trebizond, on the Turkish coast of the Black Sea, as his address. That could mean that he had opened a branch or second studio there, because he had already photographed considerably in that region. All the pictures that he sent to the Exhibition in Paris - 17 in total - were made in that area. According to the catalogue they were prints from wet collodion plates. For the rest, this was the only time he submitted work for the SFP exhibitions in Paris. A couple of years later, in 1878, the took part in the Anthropological Exhibition in Moscow, where he received an honourable mention. He would also receive distinctions at photography exhibitions in Turkey, Persia and Italy.

In the years 1877 and 1878 Ermakov received an exceptional commission: he was added to the General Staff of the Caucasian Army, in the Field Photography Section, to record military movements in the Russo-Turkish war. None of the photographs he produced for this have been located.

Trips and reportages

During his working life Ermakov must have traversed huge distances. If we look at the photographs in the albums in his collection, it would appear that he had a great interest in geography and ethnography in the whole of Eurasia. In addition to Georgia itself, he must have travelled through Turkey and Persia, to Bukhara and Samarkand, through the southern Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnia and Ingushetia, and through the Crimea, to the north of Georgia. Apparently here he was himself at work with one or more assistants. It is also possible that he sent his co-workers to these various places. Perhaps some of the photographic material in the albums also comes from other photographers, from whom he purchased negative plates. The result was an enormous photographic oeuvre which can be termed extensive and multifaceted. He records the inhospitable, snow-capped mountain ranges of Svanetia, the oil fields in Baku and the construction of drilling rigs, the 1905 pogrom in Baku, the architecture, churches and monuments in all these regions, art reproductions and extensive surveys of the peoples from these areas in long series and detailed reportages. All these series and still many more other subjects are to be found in Ermakov's sales albums. They contain an almost incalculable treasury of information about a number of regions and peoples in the Caucasus, Turkey, Russia, Iran and the surrounding area.

These trips were no simple undertaking. The photographer worked with large glass plates (often handled wet), employed cameras of various formats, and always had to have his chemicals and darkroom near at hand. Ermakov in fact worked with glass plates of up to 50 x 60 cm. In the 19th century photography had not yet mastered enlargement. All prints were produced in the same dimensions as the negative plate; Ermakov thus must have used a mammoth camera. This also means that for his work he must have had a sort of caravan with him in order to carry all his apparatus, as well as a mobile darkroom. It is reported that Ermakov himself specially designed such a mobile laboratory. To have carried out all the work of his that has been located, that was certainly no unnecessary luxury. He returned from an expedition to the mountains of Svanetia in 1910 with as many as 1500 negatives. It is obvious that Ermakov also did business elsewhere for periods of time, or had multiple branches, as in Trebizond, mentioned earlier, but certainly also in Teheran, where he received the title of Court Photographer to the Shah of Persia. Photographs by Ermakov are to be found at the University of Teheran.

Ermakov ultimately operated a large photographic business over the remarkably long time span of about 45 years. Over this period he must have produced at least 25,000 negatives: that is, after all, the number that have been found in his estate. His interests, however, also ran well beyond photography. He was an honorary member of the Caucasian Section of the Moscow Archaeological Society and the Association for the Advancement of the Visual Arts, and he was given the freedom of the city of Tbilisi. It is not known precisely when Ermakov died; it must have been around 1916/1918.

*****

The Kadjars and the Rebirth of Persia

Soltan Ali Mirza Kadjar. Honorary President, IQSA

In order to be able to judge, fairly, what the Kadjar period was, and what it brought to Persia, it is helpful to give a brief overview of the situation Persia found herself in at the end of the 18th century, when Agha Mohammad Khan finally secured the throne of Persia for himself. To that end, it is also necessary to give a brief overview of the situation of the country at the beginning of the 20th century when Ahmad Shah left the reins of power to Reza Khan. Certainly this discussion cannot be meaningful if one does not take into consideration which aspects of this development were due to the actions --positive or negative-- of the Kadjar sovereigns, and which were simply due to the progress of history, which, above and beyond human intervention, engenders change in due time.At the end of the Kadjar period, Persia was on a track leading towards true democracy while conserving its personality and originality. What came after was no more due to their influence. Has the goal the Kadjars hoped for and laboured towards been attained?

*****

lllusory Promises: Iranian cities as portrayed in Western travelogues in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi periods.

Cyrus Samii

This paper provides a thorough documentation of how western travelers to Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries chose to portray the cities they visited, in photographs, etchings and written descriptions. The paper illustrates a number of themes prevalent in the images and depictions of Iranian cities in travelogues of this period. An extensive discussion of the preconceptions of Iran is presented, highlighting the Western image of Iran and Iranian cities as expressed in history, poetry, and legend. Thus the romantic view of Iran as the fallen empire of Xerxes and Darius, as a land of roses and nightingales, as a land of one-eyed porters and fortunate fishermen, is examined and documented. In this analysis, Iranian cities are presented as the stage setting, or the backdrops against which the notions of Iran are examined by Western travelers.

It is posited and demonstrated that these notions of Iran, and the desire to flee the conventions of ŌmodernÕ Europe serve as the basis for any depictions of the country, whether in photographs, sketches, or written descriptions. Indeed it would seem that practically every travelogue of the Qajar period seeks to alternatively to affirm the romantic images or to disabuse the reader of these notions of Persia. Ironically, in the early Pahlavi period, the illusory promise is often one of modernity rather than romanticism. The travelogues provide a richness of images and imagination that enlivens any discussion of the subject. The presentation relies on photographs, sketches and descriptions from travelogues as well as documentary evidence that places these observations in context.

*****

Heroes, Villains and Aspirations: The Portrait Photograph within Public Visual Space in Qajar Iran (1905-1925)

Reza Sheikh

Photography remained an elitist occupation throughout the Qajar period. However the social and political upheavals associated with the constitutional period (1906-1909) and the chaos that ensued the onset of the First World War which lasted till the end of the Qajar reign (1925) opened a new chapter in Iranian photography. While portrait photography remained the dominant genre, the registered faces were from a broader spectrum of society and the subject matter stepped beyond the private world of the few to enter the public visual space. The first vestiges of a ŅmarketÓ based on ŅpopularÓ portrait photographs can be detected. Postcards and photo-albums were the products, the majlis and public photography studios were the suppliers, and the nascent middle class was the consumer. This new economy of photographs laid the grounds for the expansion of the medium within the society, which came to fruition during the reign of the first Pahlavi. The choice of images of such ŅpopularÓ portrait photographs, which were also used as historical documents in later years, will be examined as visual expressions of the public state of mind and the ŅnationÓ at large.   

*****

Pictorial Reports in the reign of Naser-od-din Shah Qajar (1850-1895)

M.Reza Tahmasbpour

Emergence and development of photography in Iran as well as realizing its useful and functional applications were mostly due to interest, attention, and support N‰ser-od-din Sh‰h Q‰jar paid to this newly developed art and technique. Actually, because of his great emphasis on this technique and its different aspects, N‰ser-od-din Sh‰h can be referred to as the founder of many branches of photography in Iran. Documentary photography, innovated at the early years of N‰ser-od-din Sh‰hÕs monarchy (after 1850) under his support, was developing by depicting travels, hunting, and other subjects of the kingÕs interest. He delegated photographers to the places that he was not able to go himself. A summary note was usually written to the photographs taken in these occasions, which included the subject, time and place of the travels, hunting, etc. "Pictorial Reports" is the term which is applied to such photographs. The pictorial reports of this kind included the following subjects: The kingÕs travels inside and outside the country, taking photographs from different states of Iran, photographs donated to the king by authorities, pictures of ancient buildings and locations, photographs served for people identification, official affairs of the court, pictures of the penal and political prisoners and convicts, ceremonial festivities, military forces, peopleÕs daily life, their jobs, and so on. The historical comparison of the growing and developing trends of photography in 19 century proves that the pioneers of this technique and art in Iran made wonderful efforts.

*****

 

The Stichting Textile Research Centre and Iranian dress projects

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood

The Stichting ('Foundation') Textile Research Centre, which is housed in the National Ethnological Museum, Leiden, is currently running various projects about different aspects of Iranian dress. The main projects are:

Qajar Dress

The Netherlands is fortunate in having several collections of Qajar dress which are available for study purposes. The Stichting Textile Research Centre, Leiden, for example, has a small but growing collection of later Qajar dress which is currently being catalogued. In addition, there are two major collections of Qajar Iranian objects in The Netherlands, one at the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden and the other at the Wereld Museum, Rotterdam. The Leiden collection was acquired in 1883, while that in Rotterdam was acquired a few years later. Both collections were purchased from A. Hotz, a Dutch merchant, who had various offices in Iran during the late nineteenth century. In 1882 preparations started to create in the following year an international exhibition in Amsterdam. Hotz was asked by the Iranian government to help organise what was then called the Persian Section.

After the exhibition closed in November 1883 the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden purchased much of Hotz's contributions to the exhibition, which included armour, toys, household equipment (mirrors, trays, lamps, etc), as well as over 125 items of clothing and textiles. The textiles also included samples of raw and ginned cotton, raw camel hair and sheep wool, as well as samples of indigo and henna.

The Rotterdam collection is not as large as that in Leiden, but contains a large number of textile samples and related items, which were deliberately purchased with the idea of giving a representative sample of Iranian textiles and their production.

Both the Leiden and Rotterdam collections of Qajar textiles and clothing are currently being catalogued by the Stichting. It is hoped that the work will result in two publications. Firstly a catalogue of the objects, and secondly an expanded version which will place the textiles and garments in their historical and social contexts. This second publication will be simply called Qajar Dress.

With the aid of M. Vartanian Bezrookore and S. Barjesteh, the Stichting is concurrently working on a social history of dress during the Qajar period. An important research tool for the study of these Qajar urban and regional items of dress are contemporary photographs. Fortunately, the researchers have access to three important collections of contemporary photographs. The first is in the University Library of Leiden University, the second is the Sevruguin and Hotz collections of the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, and the third is at the Wereld Museum, Rotterdam. These photographs will also play a major role in the relevant publications, as they demonstrate how important clothing was and still is in Iran.

Grants to carry out all this work have been given by the Iran Heritage Foundation, London, the Persian Heritage Foundation, New York, and the Barbas-Van de Klaauw Fonds (Prins Bernhard Fonds), Amsterdam. We would like to thank all of these foundations for their support of this project.

Dress of Urban and Regional Iran

Since 1997 Dr. W.J. Vogelsang, Leiden University and Dr. G.M. Vogelsang-Eastwood, TRC, Leiden, have been carrying out fieldwork in Iran around the theme of urban and regional dress. Dr. W.J. Vogelsang is concurrently working on a project concerned with pre-Islamic and early Islamic monuments in Iran, and in particular those which are of relevance to the history of Iran and Afghanistan.

Because of the richness of Iranian history and culture, clothing has always played an important role in defining a person's social, religious and gender affiliations. An Arab woman in southwestern Iran, for instance, still wears totally different clothing from a Tekke Turkmen woman in northeastern Iran. Yet they live within the same country.

Due to inter-nationalisation, the so-called "globalisation", traditional ways of life in Iran are vanishing. Some have already gone. As these ways of life disappear, an important part of Iran's heritage is vanishing.

The Leiden based project is being carried out in co-operation with the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organisation with the intention of helping to preserve knowledge about this important aspect of Iranian culture and to diffuse the collected information both within Iran and elsewhere.

To date nearly 1,000 garments have been collected which represent nearly all of the major regional groups within Iran. The garments represent traditional as well as modern forms of urban and regional dress. Some are made in traditional materials, while others are of "techno-textiles" and as such represent modern trends and developments in the field of regional dress and identity.

The work in Iran on urban and regional dress has been sponsored by Shell Iran, het Oosters Genootschap, Leiden, the Iran Heritage Foundation, London, and the Persian Heritage Foundation, New York. We should like to thank these institutes for their help.

Iranian Dress Workshops

The Stichting is also involved in organising, with the Iranian Women's Group, Leiden, a series of afternoon workshops about clothing in Iran. These are workshops used to discuss garments from (a) various regions of Iran and (b) from various historical perspectives. They are essential to the Study Centre's work as it means that we can collect background information as to how the garments were made, worn, etc. The comments, discussions, and indeed the stories which are told, are essential for putting the garments in their historical and cultural contexts.

Iranian Dress Booklets

One of the aims of the Workshops is to prepare material for a series of booklets about various aspects of urban and regional dress in Iran. The aim is to use these booklets in the various Iranian Saturday Schools where Iranian culture is taught to children who have been brought up in the Netherlands, so missing part of their cultural heritage.

Although funding is not yet available for this work, the Stichting is preparing various manuscripts. These booklets will be about 64 pages in length and in full colour. The proposed titles at the moment include: Iranian Urban Dress; Qajar Dress, Dress Reforms of the Twentieth Century; The Chador; Iranian Armenian Dress; Iranian Kurdish Dress; Qashqai Dress; Iranian Turkmen Dress; Baktiari and Luri Dress, and Dress of Iranian Minorities. Work has already started on two books in the series, namely, The Chador (G.M. Vogelsang-Eastwood) and Iranian Armenian Dress (M.Vartanian Bezrookore).

M. Vartanian Bezrookore is of Tehran Armenian descent and is working with members of her family to build up an archive about Armenian dress in Iran, especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is currently looking for family stories, photographs, archival records, Armenian clothing, and so forth.

If anyone is interested in any aspect of our work, then please do not hesitate in getting in contact with either Dr. G.M. Vogelsang-Eastwood or M. Vartanian Bezrookore, at the Textile Research Centre, Postbox 212, 2300 AE Leiden, The Netherlands; tel/fax: 071-5418442; e-mail: textile@rmv.nl 

*****

Images of Iran in Dutch photographic collections: An analysis

Corien J.M. Vuurman

The invention of the technique of photography provided people with the idea that these images would represent reality. However, with the improvement of the technique the photographer was given an ever widening scala of possibilities. It was soon realised that between photographer and the object there always was the camera and a large range of technical means to develop and print the photograph. In other words, technology and the artistic ideas of the photographer did not represent reality, but provided it with an image.

In addition to the technical procedures, the style itself of photographing, information about the photographer and his objectives it is also of great interest for the photo-historian to study what and how objects are photographed. The meaning of pictures is always dependent on cultural codes and conventions. But also the spectators give meaning to a photograph. The exchange between the pre-conceived ideas of the spectator, and the images evoked by the photograph, may lead to new ideas or confirm these older ideas.

'Orientalism' is the title of a book (1978) which made its author, Edward Said, into a famous writer. The book discusses the relationship between image formation and European domination of the Near East. In his work Said tries to indicate that the West, via its literature and academic work, created an image of the Near East that was used by European leaders to justify colonial expansion. According to Said this aspect, which is essentially racist, is one of the structural characteristics of Western civilization, for the image that is held of other peoples and cultures is a reflection of one's self-image. The Western self-image, closely related to the image of the 'other', is thus determined by relationships of domination, a feeling of cultural superiority and a drive for economic expansion. Said's arguments are strong. On the basis of many examples Said shows the Western construction of an image of an underdeveloped Orient.

Realising that photographs do not represent reality, but provide it with a certain image, and bearing in mind Said's conclusions that during the 19th and early 20th century the image was created of an underdeveloped and backward Orient, it is of great interest to study the photographs of Iran in Dutch collections.