Project description
Unique historiographical study into early Ottoman photography
A European invention of the 1830s, the technological wonder of photography was readily adopted in the West as a matter of course. Other cultures, however, had different reactions to it. The EU-funded HRPOE project sets out to investigate how photography was regarded by those in the upper echelons of the Ottoman Empire. HRPOE will conduct a comparative examination of photographic publications made by educated military officers, Armenian entrepreneurs and well-to-do enthusiasts. HRPOE will highlight how their respective attitudes to the new medium resulted from the interplay of epistemological beliefs, cultural dynamics and the modernisation of the Ottoman Empire to become more in tune with the West.
Objective
Histories of Reception of Photography in the Ottoman Empire (HRPOE) action is the first in-depth study to analyse how the Ottomans grasped the photographic medium that emanated from a different epistemological and cultural context, and what kinds of uses and meanings they attributed to it. It is a media historiographical investigation that differentiates between three imperial groups in their stance towards photography: military officers of imperial higher education institutions, Armenian entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts among the upper-class Muslims. To examine how each group conceptualised the medium, it turns to their publications on photography and engages with them through contextual and comparative analysis. The research aims to reveal how each group’s interpretation of photography depended upon their epistemic and cultural interactions with the Ottoman modernization and the West. In this way, it pursues to disclose the heterogeneity of experiences and knowledge structures involved in the reception of photography in the Ottoman Empire.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinator
0313 Oslo
Norway