1035
Syria, Constantinople, The Mediterranean, Athens, etc
published in London by Day & Son (Özendes, 1995,
154).
In 1862 A. de Moustier traveled through Anatolia
taking photographs, which were used to illustrate the 15
volume Le Tour du Monde published in 1864 (Özendes,
1995, 156).
Tancrede R. Dumas, who founded a studio in Beirut
in 1860, took photographs in Istanbul in 1866 (Özendes,
1995, 162).
L. Fiorillo of Alexandria and G. Lekegian of Jerusa-
lem are noted particularly for photographs of their own
localities (Özendes, 1995, 82).
Travelers to this region mainly took photographs of
eastern cities, so different from their western counter-
parts, ancient ruins, the pyramids of Egypt and Muslim
cemeteries (Özendes, 1995, 44)
James Robertson (1813–1888), who worked as an
engraver at the mint in London between 1833–1840,
was employed in Istanbul from 1841, after the Ottoman
government decided to modernize the Imperial Mint. He
and Felice Beato (1825–1903) photographed Malta in
1850, and Greece, the Balkans and Anatolia in 1851. In
1853 Robertson’s photographs were published as Pho-
tographic Views of Constantinople by Joseph Cundall in
London, followed the next year by Photographic Views
of Antiques of Athens, Corinth, Aegina etc, again by the
same publisher.
After the Crimean War broke out between the Ot-
tomans and Russians in 1853, fi rst France and then, in
March 1854, Britain, joined the war as allies of Ottoman
Turkey. Roger Fenton was commissioned to photograph
the war, and with his horse-drawn cart inscribed with
the words “Photographic Van” he took over 360 photo-
graphs in 1855. When Fenton became ill and returned
to England, Robertson and Felice Beato went to the
Crimea in August 1855, and took over sixty photographs
of Sivastopol, Malakoff and Balaklava during the last
months of the war.
Beato traveled to India in 1857, China in 1860 and
Japan in 1862. Robertson closed his studio in Istanbul in
1867, but evidently remained there fore another decade,
since the last medallion that he designed for the Ottoman
Mint is dated 1876. In 1881 he went to Japan, where he
died in 1888 (Özendes, 1995, 89).
Carlo Naya (1816–1882) opened a studio in Péra,
Istanbul, in 1845. Upon the death of his brother Giovanni
in 1857, he returned to Italy and settled in Venice
(Özendes, 1995, 100).
As western travelers became more familiar with the
Islamic countries, they began to photograph local people
as well as monuments, streets and markets, and this led
to the emergence of local studios in the major cities of
the Ottoman Empire (Özendes, 1995, 44).
In Istanbul studios began to be established from the
1850s, mainly along Grand’ Rue de Péra, in the dis-
trict where westerners working in the city congregated
(Özendes, 1995, 35).
The fi rst Ottoman studios were established by Arme-
nians and Greeks, since although there was a portrait
tradition in court circles, Islamic orthodoxy frowned on
representation of the human fi gure and Muslims were
reluctant to be photographed. Armenians were skilled
artists and artisans, famed particularly as pharmacists,OTTOMAN EMPIRE: ASIA AND PERSIA
Pesce, Luigi. In the Mosque
of the Damegan/The Eunuchs.
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Gift of
Charles Wilkinson, 1997
(1997.683.21) Image © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.