Nancy Micklewright: Constructing Histories of Photography: the Ottoman Example

Using a series of photographs from the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, this talk examines the way photographs were produced and consumed, primarily in Istanbul. Reconstructing the way those images have come down to us, via albums, archives, collectors, and markets, we look at how a very new history has been constructed over the past few decades in order to understand what we know now, and how we have come know it. Then we will consider the changing nature and role of collecting institutions through these same decades and their impact on the writing of new histories of photography in and of the region.

Nancy Micklewright is head of public and scholarly engagement at Freer|Sackler, the museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC. Prior to joining the Freer|Sackler, she was senior program officer at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles and previously a professor of Islamic art history and the history of photography at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Understanding the history of photography in the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East generally is a long-standing research interest of hers.