Picturing the Ottoman Armenian World: Photography in Erzerum, Harput, Van and Beyond (Armenians in the Modern and Early Modern World)

About the Author David Low is a photographic historian specialising in the photography of the Ottoman Armenian world, and the wider intersections between photography, migration and exile. Currently Visiting Scholar, at the AGBU Nubar Library, Paris, France, he received his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, UK, and has published articles in peer-review journals such as International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies and Études arméniennes contemporaines.Bedross Der Matossian is Associate Professor of Modern Middle East history and the Hymen Rosenberg Associate Professor in Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of multiple books including Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (2014), winner of the 2015 Sona Aronian Book Prize for Armenian Studies and Research and Winner of the 2017 SAS Outstanding Book Award sponsored by the Society for Armenian Studies. He serves on the editorial board of journals including the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). Product Description The Armenian contribution to Ottoman photography in the last decades of the empire has been well-documented. Studios founded and run by Armenian Ottomans in Istanbul contributed to the exciting cultural flourishing of Ottoman 'modernity', before its dissolution after World War I. Less known however are the pioneering studios from the east in the empire's Armenian heartlands, whose photographic output reflected and became a major form of documenting the momentous events and changes of the period, from war and revolution to persecution, migration and ultimately, genocide.This book examines photographic activity in three Armenian cities on the Armenian plateau: Erzurum, Kharpert and Van. It explores how indigenous photography was rooted in the seismic social, political and cultural shifts that shaped Armenian lives during the Ottoman Empire's last four decades. Arguing that photographic practice was marked by the era's central movements, it shows how photography was bound-up in Armenian educational endeavours, mass migration and revolutionary activity. Photography responded to and became the instrument of these phenomena, so much so that it can be shown that they were responsible for the very spread of the medium through the Armenian communities of the Ottoman East and the rapid increase in photographic studios.Contributing to growing interest in Ottoman and Middle Eastern photographic history, the book also offers a valuable perspective on the history of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Review “"Picturing the Ottoman Armenian World powerfully fills the most glaring lacunae in photography studies of the Middle East: a critical and rigorous deep dive into the central role of the Armenians in the history of Armenians in the history of Ottoman photography. Low gifts us a scrupulous and erudite social and art history of Armenian photography that promises not only to change how we think of Ottoman visual culture but also shakes how we understand the history of photography writ large."” ―Stephen Sheehi, Wellesley College, USA““Low provides a ground-breaking study of photography from a neglected region of the Ottoman Empire. He tells the compelling story of multi-generational Armenian families of photographers, whose work was long believed lost in the 1915 genocide. An important contribution to both the history of photography and the social history of Ottoman Armenians.”” ―Armen T. Marsoobian, Southern Connecticut State University, USA