Sabiha Göloğlu

Multi-, Paraline, Perspectival, and Photographic Views: Travelling Images of the Islamic Pilgrimage and Visitation Sites

In the late Ottoman Empire, Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, as well as their sacred sites and structures, were depicted via a variety of visual modes including multi-, paraline, perspectival, and photographic views. These representational modes coexisted without hierarchy or evolutionary processes, contrary to dominant narratives of art history that overemphasize the roles of perspective and photography. This talk will focus on Ottoman multiviews of the Islamic holy sites within a context of similar depictions from different regions and periods, showing that they do not stand isolated from their predecessors or depictions of space in other visual cultures. Furthermore, it will investigate text-and-image relationships and graphic qualities of multiviews, which made them a preferable mode for pilgrimage manuals, scrolls, and certificates.

Sabiha Göloğlu (CAHIM Fellow) received her Ph.D. in Archaeology and History of Art in 2018 from Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. Her dissertation focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century representations of the Islamic pilgrimage and visitation sites in the Ottoman Empire, bringing together a broad array of images that have never been systematically and comparatively examined before, except in catalogues and articles. She has two essays in press which explore the content and use of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem images in late Ottoman prayer books. She holds a BA of Architecture and MA of Architectural History from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey.