Histories of Reception of Photography in the Ottoman Empire

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.