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Between
the invention of photography in 1839 and the end of the Ottoman Empire in
1922, there is one significant period photography was to find more
practical and documentary applications. Sultan Abdulhamid
II, who reigned from 1876 to 1909, took a strong interest in the subject
even before his accession, and grasped with some shrewdness the possible
uses to which photography could be put. Abdülhamid
II succeeded in putting into place the technology and bureaucratic
structures to amass an extensive body of official photographs. The official
photographic record includes compilations of photographs that document the
activities of the government or of entities supported by the government,
the sultan, and other official bodies.
Sultan Abdülhamid II was a determined modernizer. His
photograph donations to the British
Museum and Library of
Congress of what today might be named 'state-of-the-art propaganda' reflect
the possibilities afforded by technology and the visual image. Illustrating
sites from around the empire, such as schools, hospitals as well as
military training and exercises, modern buildings, the grand palaces and possessions
of the sultan, and monuments of the classical, Byzantine, and Ottoman
pasts, albums claim a place for the Ottoman sultan as the leader of a
progressive, imperial power embracing modernity. The photographs give
viewers an excellent sense of the modernizing projects the Empire focused
upon during its final decades, as well as the way that Abdülhamid
II wanted Europeans and Americans to see his empire.
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