Photography and the Empty Landscape: Excavating the Ottoman Armenian Image World

Abstract

This essay outlines and contends with the problem of the absence of Armenians from Ottoman photographic history, with a distinct concern being that history’s failure to consider the provincial photography that constituted the bulk of Ottoman Armenian image production. This study takes a school photograph from Kharpert province as the point of embarkation for a consideration of the themes and purposes of provincial photography. It is particularly concerned with historical context, and investigates the late social history of Kharpert through the lives and work of the photograph’s central sitter, the writer Tlgadintsi, and its makers, the Soursourians. It considers how photographic production related to this social history and grew out of specific community needs during a time of mass migration and massacre, being a means of tying people together in the present and looking forwards with hope for the future.