The Getty Research
Institute has digitized a collection of Ottoman-era photographs available to
study and download for free.
Deena ElGenaidi
Unknown
photographer, Constantinople, between 1888 and 1900 (all images courtesy
Getty’s open content program)
The Getty Research
Institute has recently digitized over 6,000 19th- and early 20th-century
Ottoman-era photographs, collected in the 1980s by French collector Pierre de
Gigord during his travels through Turkey. The collection is now available to
study and download for free online.
The photos encompass
various walks of Ottoman life, depicting “landmark architecture, urban and
natural landscapes, archeological sites of millennia-old civilizations, and the
bustling life of the diverse people who lived over 100 years ago in the last
decades of the waning Ottoman Empire,” according to the Iris, the Getty
Research Institute’s blog.
Unknown
photographer, Constantinople Panorama (1868)
The collection
includes a 10-part panorama of Constantinople, which required stitching
separate prints together to create a panoramic view of the Istanbul skyline in
1878. The shots can now be viewed in their entirety on a single screen. 82
glass plate negatives were digitized, along with 60 photographic albums
documenting scenes of Ottoman life. Each individual image in the albums was
photographed and digitized, allowing viewers to see up-close details alongside
the calligraphic image captions.
The photos depict
markets, sites of destruction, street vendors, encounters with government
officials “such as the minister of war, Enver Pasha, the highest-ranking
perpetrator of the Armenian genocide,” and more.
G.M. Georgoulas,
Pyramids (undated, c. 1870–1929), gelatin silver print, depicts a Turkish
tourist group posed to the side of the Great Sphinx
The digital files
can be accessed through the Getty Research Institute catalogue or through the
Gigord Collection’s finding aid. Unfortunately, two parts of the collection,
according to the Iris, “were beyond the scope of this project” and therefore
not digitized. Those include press photographs documenting the modernization of
the Ottoman Empire and its transition to the Republic of Turkey, along with
archival documentation on photographic studios. However, those materials can
still be accessed by visiting the Getty Research Institute Special Collections
in Los Angeles.
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