Local Portraiture

IRANIAN IRANIAN
SERIES SERIES

The camera is not just an a-cultural technical device, a non-culture

influenced medium. Culture, or more precisely, the cultural background of LOCAL PORTRAITURE
the photographer, does play a role in the process of taking a photograph. TH R O U G H TH E L E NS O F TH E 1 9 TH CE NTU RY
Photography is clearly not a mirror of daily life: the fact that images are I R ANI AN P H OTO G R AP H E R S
constructions is especially obvious in nineteenth-century studio portrait
photography. Carmen Pérez González

In Local Portraiture: Through the Lens of the 19th Century Iranian

Photographers, ICAS prize-winning author, Carmen Pérez González is
exploring how indigenous Iranian photographers constructed their own
realities in contrast to how foreign photographers constructed Iranian's
realities. Through an in-depth comparative visual analysis of 19th century
Iranian portrait photography and Persian painting, the author arrives at the
insight that aesthetic preferences correlate with socio-cultural habits and
practices in writing, reading and looking. And, subsequently, she
advocates for a place in a global history of photography of those
unknown, local photo-histories (such as the Iranian one) and of the
indigenous photographers that build it up.

Carmen Pérez González is currently working as a research fellow at the

“Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst” in Cologne.

Carmen Pérez González

WWW.LUP.NL

9 789087 281564
LEIDEN UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Local Portraiture
Iranian Studies Series

The Iranian Studies Series publishes high-quality scholarship on various

aspects of Iranian civilisation, covering both contemporary and classical
cultures of the Persian cultural area. The contemporary Persian-speaking
area includes Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Central Asia, while classi-
cal societies using Persian as a literary and cultural language were located
in Anatolia, Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent.
The objective of the series is to foster studies of the literary, historical, reli-
gious and linguistic products in Iranian languages. In addition to research
monographs and reference works, the series publishes English-Persian criti-
cal text-editions of important texts. The series intends to publish resources
and original research and make them accessible to a wide audience.

Chief Editor:
A.A. Seyed-Gohrab (Leiden University)

Advisory Board of ISS:

F. Abdullaeva (University of Cambridge)
G.R. van den Berg (Leiden University)
D.P. Brookshaw (Standford University)
J.T.P. de Bruijn (Leiden University)
N. Chalisova (Russian State University of Moscow)
D. Davis (Ohio State University)
F.D. Lewis (University of Chicago)
L. Lewisohn (University of Exeter)
S. McGlinn (Unaffiliated)
Ch. Melville (University of Cambridge)
D. Meneghini (University of Venice)
N. Pourjavady (University of Tehran)
Ch. van Ruymbeke (University of Cambridge)
S. Sharma (Boston University)
K. Talattof (University of Arizona)
Z. Vesel (CNRS, Paris)
R. Zipoli (University of Venice)
 Local Portraiture

Through the Lens of the 19th-Century

Iranian Photographers

Carmen Pérez González

Leiden University Press

Cover design: Tarek Atrissi Design
Layout: The DocWorkers, Almere

ISBN 978 90 8728 156 4

e-ISBN 978 94 0060 077 5
e-ISBN 978 94 0060 078 2 (ePUB)
NUR 630 / 652

© Carmen Pérez González / Leiden University Press, 2012

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written per-
mission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
 For my family: Luna, Mitra, Mani and Ali-Reza Darvish

For my teachers: Prof. dr. Kitty Zijlmans, Dr. Helen Westgeest and
Prof. dr. Just Jan Witkam

To the memory of the Iranian photographer Bahman Jalali

(Tehran, 1949-2010) and to his wife Rana Javadi
Table of Contents

Foreword 9
Acknowledgments 13
Acknowledgments for the images 17
Introduction 19
Brief Introduction to the History of Photography in Iran 27

1 Visual Laterality: The Relationship between the Direction of

Writing and Composition 41
1.1 Definition of visual laterality 42
1.2 Nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography 45
1.3 Visual brain and visual perception in art 55
1.4 Asymmetries of the photographic space:
Brain mechanisms or artistic conventions? 59
1.5 Reading habits versus aesthetic preferences:
A neurological approach 62

2 The Written Image: Text and Photography 71

2.1 Persian calligraphy and type of scripts 71
2.2 Text and nineteenth-century Iranian portrait studio
photography: Type of script versus content and meaning
of the inscription 75

3 Pose, Gesture and Objects Held by the Sitter 105

3.1 Gesture, posture and pose 105
3.2 Pose and gesture in the Persian painting tradition 112
3.3 Pose and objects held by the sitter in nineteenth-century
Iranian portrait photography 119

4 Arrangement of Space 131

4.1 Spatial characteristics of Persian miniature painting 131
4.2 The use of space in Persian miniature painting 140
4.3 The use of space in nineteenth-century photography in Iran 146

5 Interactions between Western and Iranian Photography 155

5.1 Schema of positions in portrait photography 155
5.2 Western photographers versus local sitters:
Photographing the Other 157
5.3 Interaction between Western and Iranian photographers 165
5.4 Hybridity versus Appropriation 178
8 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Conclusion 189
Afterword 193
Bibliography 195
Appendix: Photo Chronology 209
About the author 215
Index 217
Photos 221
Foreword

When Carmen Pérez González asked me to write a foreword to this book,

I readily accepted. Carmen had just successfully completed her doctoral
dissertation at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and was awarded her
PhD on 2 February 2010. What started a good four years ago, when
Carmen Pérez knocked on our door presenting her ideas for a dissertation,
grew into an important and very interesting PhD thesis which has now re-
sulted in this book containing a comparative visual analysis of nineteenth-
century Iranian portrait photography and Persian painting.
How does a Spanish woman with a Masters in Astrophysics from
Barcelona University end up studying for a PhD comparing the photogra-
phy and painting of Iran in Leiden? Her interest in photography was al-
ready there but, after two-and-a-half years traveling overland from Turkey
to China, she returned home a skilled photographer with over sixty rolls of
film. A catalogue for a solo exhibition on the often hard physical labor per-
formed by women in Asia followed, as well as a study in Fine Arts
(Photography) at Barcelona University. The choice of Iran was fuelled by
her knowledge and love of the country, its language and culture, which she
had come to know well through her Iranian husband. Her coming to
Leiden was understandable because Leiden University houses an impress-
ive collection of photographs and teaches in this field, as well as being re-
nowned for its expertise in Middle Eastern studies. The decisive factor in
her choice of subject matter was, however, the fact that the history of
photography in Iran, especially the early period, had been largely over-
looked by Western photography historians. Moreover, besides the well-
known Western photographers (including Ernst Hoeltzer of Germany) who
have worked in Iran since the early days of photography, she also discov-
ered a wealth of Iranian photographers, all with their own idiosyncrasies.
It was precisely the specificity of cultural backgrounds and practices that
caught her interest. In order to fully understand the cultural embeddedness
of practices used in photography and composition, she undertook a com-
parative analysis with the rich tradition of Persian painting. Through an in-
depth comparative visual analysis of nineteenth-century portrait photogra-
phy and Persian (miniature) painting Carmen Pérez arrived at, and substan-
tiated, the insight that aesthetic preferences correlate with socio-cultural ha-
bits and practices in writing, reading and looking. She also revealed the
nature of this relationship. The direction of writing, for instance, proved to
be one of the culturally defined elements in a photograph. Whereas in the
West pictures are “read” from left to right (the direction of writing of all
Western languages), Carmen Pérez’ analysis shows that the opposite in fact
10 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

applies in Iran/Persia, where Farsi is written from right to left.

Consequently, Iranian photographers produce “mirror images” of those
made by Western photographers. This is supported by studies in the field
of visual laterality in neuropsychology and perception psychology, which
are crucial in building a theoretical framework for exploring this phenom-
enon. Furthermore, she made discoveries regarding spatial arrangement,
poses and attributes, and the use of text within the space of the image, the
latter underscoring the importance of poetry, not only in former Persia but
in modern Iran too.
The corpus of work grew over the years, and the photographs now num-
ber in their thousands. Each time we met, Carmen Pérez proudly showed
us yet another stack of photos, albums and books, ardently collected with
the aid of numerous friends and colleagues, who purchased books in Iran
and elsewhere. The collection is still growing in both size and importance.
The numbers reveal the great interest in photography among nineteenth-
century Iranian photographers, the quality their skill; but Carmen Pérez’
analysis has also shown how deeply compositional solutions are rooted in
the cultural traditions of Persia.
This study is intermedial, intercultural and interdisciplinary. It brings to-
gether various mediums (photography, miniature painting, texts), cultures
(Western European and Middle Eastern), and theoretical perspectives (vi-
sual analysis, neuroscience, art history and history of photography). In this
respect it is as important to photographic studies as it is to the field of
study we refer to at Leiden University as World Art Studies. This research
is a study of indigenous, culture-bound artistic practices, which we are an-
xious to learn about, and a study of growing interculturalization over the
course of time. This process of artistic exchange between disparate con-
texts involves diffusion or migration of cultural traits back and forth, illu-
strated in this case by the changing habits in studio portrait photography
inspired by Western practices.
To summarize what makes this book important: First, it is a valuable
contribution to the study of the history of photography and the field of
World Art Studies, as well as to the history and culture of Iran. Secondly,
it is built on a large and partly unknown corpus of photographs, and on an
interdisciplinary, comparative approach. It convincingly shows the impor-
tance of visual analysis, of deep looking. And lastly, it provides a model
for comparative analysis of visual material that can be applied to other cul-
tures and contexts. In this respect, the study not only uncovers the cultural
conditioning in the creation of images of a particular country, it also elabo-
rates a model for investigating and comparing corpuses of photographs and
paintings produced in disparate cultures around the world. This book is an
important contribution to the understanding of both cultural particularities
and communalities. It is my profound hope that it will prompt a great deal
FOREWORD 11

of discussion on the issue of intercultural exchange and will further open

up the field of comparative research within and between cultures.

Kitty Zijlmans
Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory
Leiden University
Acknowledgments

There are many people who have contributed in different ways to this re-
search. I am indebted to several Iranian photo historians who have helped
me to acquire the material required to start this research project. They
bought books for me in Iran and sent them to me in Spain or Germany
through Iranian friends traveling back and forth to Iran, or they themselves
brought them to me. Rana Javadi has been aware of my research since the
very first moment, when in 2003 I went to Iran to start collecting books on
the topic. She has helped me ever since, continuously, not only in practical
things like getting books for me, but also on a personal level, continuously
supporting me and encouraging my research. She has my deepest respect,
admiration, and gratitude.

Mohammad Rezā Tahmāsbpur has been extremely helpful and kind to me

in the last two years of my PhD thesis’ research, helping me to get recently
published books in Iran and answering every question I posed to him by
e-mail. Dr Rezā Sheikh has been a wonderful colleague, always encoura-
ging me to keep on my research path, especially in the last two years of
post-doctoral research. I had the honor to meet Prof. dr. Iraj Afshar person-
ally on the day of my PhD thesis defense (February 2010), as he was part
of the defense committee. Unfortunately, he passed away just a year after
that date. There are other scholars to whom I am thankful, since their
books were an inspiration and a valuable source of information to me
throughout my research (and all of them acted, without knowing it, as my
invisible and most respected teachers): among them, the late Yahyā Zokā,
Prof. dr. Sheila Blair, Dr. Layla Diba, Prof. dr. Robert Hillenbrand, Prof.
dr. Oleg Grabar, and Dr. Charhyar Adle, all of them referenced several
times throughout the book. To Corien Vuurman I am thankful for suggest-
ing me to contact one of my three supervisors when I was lost looking for
someone somewhere who might have interest in my research.

My dissertation was a higly cooperative and satisfactory work between my

supervisors in Leiden and myself. I came to Leiden with an interesting cor-
pus of photographs and paintings and some hypotheses and intuitions, but
thanks to the guidance of my three supervisors the dissertation achieved
the theoretical depth that was required. Prof. dr. Kitty Zijlmans and Dr.
Helen Westgeest have worked hard to pinpoint the best of my research and
have guided me and inspired me since I started working with them. To
Helen Westgeest I am especially indebted for her ideas on the chapter of
the arrangement of the space, and to Kitty Zijlmans for her remarks
14 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

throughout the whole dissertation and especially on the chapter about the
interaction of Western and Iranian photography. Prof. dr. Just Jan Witkam
was also a fundamental member of the team of supervisors and his remarks
and corrections on the chapter devoted to text and photography were very
important. Further, I am honored that he translated some of the texts found
in the photographs selected for that chapter.
After I finished writing my dissertation in the summer of 2009, I kept re-
searching and testing my different research hypotheses, and in this new
phase the help and guidance of the neurologist Prof. dr. Chris McManus
(for chapter 1) and the Islamic art historian Prof. dr. Sheila Blair (for chap-
ter 2) have been fundamental.
Kausar Turabi and Dr. Evan Siegel have been very helpful with their
corrections of this manuscript written in English, not my mother language.
Mina Zand Siegel has kindly helped me with the translation of a long
poem found on one of the photographs and has helped me with editing the
manuscript.
Dolors Tapias and Manolo Laguillo were the supervisors of my research
during the two year PhD course that I took at the Faculty of Fine Arts at
Barcelona University in order to get my ABC (All But Dissertation), that
allowed me to start my PhD Thesis a couple of years later at the Faculty of
Art History at Leiden University. They both helped me in different ways to
start my research. Dolors has been one of the most generous teachers that I
have ever had, and Manolo was probably the only one in Barcelona
University who properly understood the importance of making an in-depth
study of the visual-laterality hypothesis.

My family has been extremely important in making me strong enough to

persevere in my research. Ali-Reza Darvish has been part of the whole de-
livery process of this book and the three kids that came to this world in the
years that I wrote my dissertation: Luna, who was born in Barcelona the
year that I started thinking about this research, in 2004 and Mitra and Mani,
who decided to come to this world together, in Cologne, in the Summer of
2007. I also thank the support given to me by good friends of mine: Pilar
Lombardo, Kausar Turabi, Sandra Garabello and Eduardo Yáñez, Zari
Ashena and Sharhyar Ahadi, Ana Briongos and Toni Alsina, Yael Langella
(who spoke 10 languages, among them Hebrew, Arabic and Russian, and
whose wisdom, integrity and kindness keep guiding me) and Uwe Geest,
Elmar Seibel, Shirin Farahi, Mardi and Nushin Bahadori, Soheila Mirzai,
Laura Morala Forte, Eduardo de Francisco Jiménez, José Miguel Espí
Huerta, Patricia Cantó, Mónica Solé, and my aunt Angelita Pérez Campos.

Lastly, and most important, I would like to thank my publishers, the

Iranian Studies Series (Leiden University Press), especially Asghar Seyed
Gohrab, Yvonne Twisk and Chantal Nicolaes. I am grateful also to ICAS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 15

and its director Paul van der Velde, for the ICAS Prize that they awarded
me for my dissertation and for their generous help to print this book.

Cologne, January 2012

Transliteration note:
I wish to thank Dr. Asghar Seyed Gohrab for applying systematically
through my manuscript the transliteration schema. An ideal transliteration
system for Persian does not exist and there are various systems of transli-
terations used by different encyclopedia, journals, libraries, etc. For the
sake of consistency and uniformity, a transliteration system is used in this
book to transcribe the Arabo-Persian script involving a minimum of diacri-
tical signs: only the long vowel /a/ is indicated with ā. The compound
words consisting of a noun and a suffix such as akkāsbāshi is written as
one word. The initial hamze and the letter eyn at the beginning and at the
end of a word is not transcribed, only in the middle of the words the eyn
and hamze are indicated. The Persian ezafe is written as -e after consonants
and -ye after vowels.
Acknowledgments for the images

I would like to thank the Leiden University Institute of Cultural

Disciplines for a generous grant to help to finance the costs of the high-
quality resolution files and reproduction fees of the images printed in this
book.

For granting me permission for the reproduction of the photographs and

paintings printed in this book, I would like to thank the following indivi-
duals and institutions: Juan José Díaz Prósper (Valencia, Spain); Prof. dr.
Iraj Afshar (Tehran, Iran); Parisa Damandan (Tehran, Iran); Andrew Halle
(Anahita Gallery, Santa Fe, USA); Yokoyama Matsusaburo; Mansour Sane
(Shiraz, Iran); Family Collection (Tokyo, Japan); Bahman Bayani (Tehran,
Iran); Collection of Prinze Sadruddin Agha Khān (Geneva, Switzerland);
Golestān Palace Library (Tehran, Iran); Stephanie Roy Barath and the
Alkazi Collection of Photography (New Delhi, India); Princeton University
Library (Princeton, USA); Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Washington, USA);
British Library (London, UK); British Museum (London, UK); Oriental
and Indian Office Library Collections (London, UK); Museé des Arts
Décoratifs (Paris, France); Museé National de Versailles (Paris, France);
The Israel Museum (Jerusalem, Israel); National Library (Cairo, Egypt);
Royal Asiatic Society (London, UK); Special Collections, Fine Arts
Library, Harvard University (Boston, USA); Harvard University Museums
(Boston, USA); Museu de la Ciencia i la Técnica de Catalunya (Barcelona,
Spain); Leiden University Library (Leiden, the Netherlands); Museum of
Ethnology in Leiden (Leiden, the Netherlands); Museum für Volkerkunde
in Vienna (Vienna, Austria); Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst (Cologne,
Germany); Museum of Ethnology in Berlin (Berlin, Germany); Staatliche
Museen (Berlin, Germany); Museum of Ethnology in Zürich (Zürich,
Switzerland); The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA); State
Heritage Museum (St Petersburg, Russia); National Library in Vienna
(Vienna, Austria); Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York, USA); the Royal
Hause Archive (The Hague, the Netherlands); Archive of the Institute for
Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies (Tehran, Iran); Topkapi Sarayi
(Istanbul, Turkey); Istanbul Museum of Islamic Art (Istanbul, Turkey); and
the Photo-Museum Tábor (Tábor, Czech Republic).

I want to thank Ms Khadijeh Mohammadi Nameghi for her generous help

with getting me high-resolution files of photographs kept in Iran.
INTRODUCTION

Field of research

The field of research of my book is nineteenth-century Iranian portrait

photography. The origin and motivation of this choice lies in my own work
as photographer in Asia. After a two and a half years of travel from
Turkey to China by land, I came back to Spain in the Summer of 2001
with around sixty rolls of films, mostly black and white, and I published
several portfolios and the catalogue of a solo exhibition about the work of
women in Asia that opened in the Principe Felipe Museum in Valencia
(2002). Many of the photographs showed women doing hard physical
work (carrying bricks, breaking stones, etc.) and others performing daily-
life tasks like picking up or carrying water, cooking or taking care of
children.
I sent the catalogue to an Iranian poet who liked it but remarked that in
some of the photographs he could guess that I was a Western photographer.
I did not really know what he meant by that, but whatever it was, it con-
cerned me for some time. It motivated me to finish my incipient career as
a photographer and to begin a long period of reflection and study whose
final result was my dissertation on which this book is based.
Asia has inspired and fascinated me for many years, first as a photogra-
pher and later as a researcher. I decided to focus my research on Iran be-
cause it is one of the most under-researched Middle Eastern countries by
Western photo-historians, specially what concerns local photographers. In
this book I undertake a visual analysis of nineteenth-century Iranian por-
trait photography.
The camera is not just an a-cultural technical device, a non-culture-influ-
enced medium. Culture, or more precisely, the cultural background of the
photographer, does play a role in the process of taking a photograph.
Photography produces constructions of real life and photographs are cultur-
al productions. Photography is clearly not a mirror of daily life: the fact
that images are constructions is especially obvious in nineteenth-century
portrait photography. The aim in my dissertation was to analyze photo-
graphs in order to show this cultural conditioning in the creation of images.
I chose images through the use of fine detail. The corpus of photographs
selected for this dissertation constitutes a practical example of photogra-
phy’s construction of the visual world and the goal of this research is to de-
monstrate that photography is always a construction of reality, regardless
of the photographer’s nationality. I am specifically interested in exploring
20 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

how indigenous Iranian photographers constructed their own realities in

contrast to how foreign photographers constructed Iranian’s realities.
Photography and painting both interpret reality. As the British photogra-
pher and critic Victor Burgin states,

when photography first emerged into the context of nineteenth cen-

tury aesthetics, it was initially taken to be an automatic record of
reality; then it was argued that it was an expression of an individual;
then it was considered to be a “record of a reality through a sensi-
bility” (Burgin 1986: 46).

Susan Sontag stated, “[P]hotographs are as much interpretation of the

world as paintings and drawings are”.1 I myself took the camera and inter-
preted a reality that was in front of me, no matter how honest my inten-
tions to show “reality” were and how hard I tried to achieve that. With my
photographs I showed, like everybody else does, my own reading of the
reality that I had in front of me. Significantly, while constructing my own
perception of reality, I missed “reality” itself.
As a result of insights into the cultural components in Iranian photogra-
phy, we may look with different eyes to Western photography in general,
which may be more “Western” than we thought.

The state-of-the-art of the discourse

Both Western and Iranian scholars’ research on nineteenth-century Western

photography in Iran has been mainly focused on a historical approach.2
Most of the publications in the West on nineteenth-century photography in
Iran deal with the work of Western photographers. Yet, there was much
more photography made by Iranian photographers than we know about in
the West and definitely more than by Western photography. Such indigen-
ous work is, indeed, interesting and bears, in some cases, a particular and
unique aesthetic. There were more than one hundred Iranian photographers
active during the second part of the nineteenth and the beginning of the
twentieth century but fewer than thirty Western photographers3, and not all
of them were professionals: some were amateurs or just took pictures to il-
lustrate their travels.4
Several books have been published about nineteenth-century Iranian in-
digenous photography in Iran: compilations of photographs with an intro-
duction about the history of photography in Iran; monographic books of
relevant Iranian photographers active during the nineteenth century; books
on photography and photographers in different cities and, rarely, on a parti-
cular subject, like the one recently published about the photography of
children.5 Most of these books on indigenous photography were published
in Persian and have not been translated into any other language. Therefore,
INTRODUCTION 21

the majority of this material is accessible only to Iranian scholars and to

Western scholars fluent in that language.

My position in the field

As the title of my dissertation suggested (“A Comparative Visual Analysis

of Nineteenth-Century Iranian Portrait Studio Photograhy and Persian
Painting”), my approach to early Iranian photography is an analytical one
based on the visual analysis of photographs taken by Iranian photographers
in the nineteenth century. While applying visual analysis, I take into con-
sideration the cultural components of the image.
My research concentrates on a visual analysis of the elements found in
nineteenth-century Iranian photography that may have been inherited from
the Iranian visual arts tradition, especially from the Iranian painting tradi-
tion. The research undertakes a comparative study of the Iranian painting
tradition and nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography. The elements
that have been identified and analyzed are:
– Mirror-like composition due to the visual-laterality phenomenon, de-
fined here as the influence of the direction of writing on the composi-
tion in works of art, particularly in photography;
– Use of calligraphic inscriptions of text within the photographic space;
– Use of traditional Iranian portraiture poses, such as kneeling, in contrast
to sitting or standing;
– The understanding of space in photographic composition: isometrical
perspective, vertical composition, grid structure layout and diffuse
compositions.

Western elements have been identified as well, but merely as a way of un-
derstanding, by way of contrast, the Iranian elements: Victorian pose (fron-
tal, hieratic, static); studio paraphernalia (chairs, backdrops, balustrades,
etc); and iconographical elements often borrowed from the Orientalist
painting tradition. Finally, I explored the mixed aesthetics present in nine-
teenth-century Iranian photography due to the appropriation of Western
elements. I do not maintain that these elements are exclusive to Iranian cul-
ture and/or that they are only found in nineteenth-century Iranian photogra-
phy. In fact, as we shall see in the course of this book, some of these
elements are also to be found in Japanese and Indian photography, albeit
with their own peculiarities. This indigenous way of representation differs
substantially from Western ones, which makes it important to study it
mainly from a comparative visual analysis approach.
22 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Frames of reference and corpus

In my research I use an interdisciplinary approach that includes the theory

of photography, Islamic art history, neuroscience, post-colonial studies and
world art studies. I am constructing a theoretical framework to analyze
nineteenth-century photographs in their cultural components. Iranian photo-
graphy is a case study, but the same study could be undertaken with any
other country. The theoretical framework developed here to analyze photo-
graphs should work also with other photographic corpuses. Each chapter is
guided by a specific theoretical perspective (see further under structure of
the book). The photographic material will recur and be analyzed in the var-
ious chapters.
The first step in order to undertake this research was to build up a cor-
pus of photographs from which to draw conclusions after pursuing an in-
depth visual analysis.6 In 2003, I started gathering as many published
books on Iranian photography as possible with the aim of building up a
corpus of photographs that would constitute the material for a starting
point for a visual analysis. The process was long and arduous, but I gath-
ered a rich corpus of material to be analyzed.7 This corpus consists of
around 5,000 portrait photographs (most of them studio portraits, but there
are also some outdoor portraits to be found within the corpus). In parallel,
I gathered two other corpuses of graphic material: a corpus of paintings
(both Persian miniature paintings and Qajar paintings, around 3,000 paint-
ings) and a corpus of Western nineteenth-century portrait photography
(around 5,000 photographs). Time and again I went through the three cor-
puses defined above, visually analyzing them with the aim of establishing
groups that could take into consideration each one of the five topics ex-
plored in my dissertation: visual laterality, text and photography, pose,
space and Western influences.
The Iranian painting tradition includes Persian miniature painting and
Qajar painting and, therefore, I will be referring to both traditions recur-
rently along the book. A comparison will be established between these
three, otherwise diverse mediums: Persian miniature painting, Qajar paint-
ing and portrait photography (only formally can and will these three differ-
ent media be compared). Miniatures are part of a sequence in a book.
Their size is very small and, therefore, these works are meant to be
enjoyed by only one person at a time, a very intimate contemplation.
Interestingly, as stated by Susan Sontag and many other theoreticians,
photography is, in contrast to Western painting and film, also an object of
contemplation, exactly what miniatures are. In contrast with this, Qajar
portrait paintings are life-size paintings and are often exposed to the public,
mostly on palace walls. Therefore, their reception is collective and open.
Photographs can be seen as part of an album and especially in the nine-
teenth century they were mainly produced with that aim, therefore bearing
INTRODUCTION 23

some narrative meaning, or as individual items. What is especially interest-

ing here is that there is no great difference in size between miniature paint-
ings and photographs (in some cases they are even the same size), whereas
the difference in size between Western paintings and photographs is huge.8
Qajar painting is seen as a worthy successor of the painting of the
Timurids (1390-1500) and the Safavids (1501-1722). In portraiture, the
Qajar artists went beyond all their predecessors. Whereas Timurid and
Safavid painting is confined to manuscripts and albums (inviting an indivi-
dual and private contemplation), Qajar painting presents itself in a variety
of forms (some of them meant for individual contemplation, some other
for collective and public contemplation): life-size paintings, painted lac-
quer, glass, painted enamel and traditional manuscript illustrations and
album pictures. As stated by the art historian of Islamic Art Layla S. Diba,
“life-size painting of this period was the visual expression of a self-
consciously historizing ruler” (Diba 1998: 45). Nāser al-Din Shah ap-
proached the new medium of photography in the same way that his prede-
cessors had approached painting: he consciously utilized imagery to con-
struct a (royal) Persian self-image. This topic has been considered by the
leading Iranian photo historian Rezā Sheikh, by Diba and also by the
Iranian postcolonialism theorist Ali Behdad.9 An important part and pro-
duction of photography in nineteenth-century Iran was done within the
walls of the Golestān Palace in Tehran (Nāser al-Din Shah’s residence) and
the Dār al-Fonun (Iran’s first institution of higher learning based on
Western models, that will be properly introduced later on in this book), as
we shall see in the brief historical introduction to the history of photogra-
phy in Iran that follows this introduction.10

Structure of the book

This book is structured in five chapters, according to the five topics men-
tioned above. In chapter one, the main research question is how the direc-
tion of writing and reading of Iranian nineteenth-century photographers in-
fluenced the way they composed the photographs that they took. No study
of the influence of the direction of script on photographic composition has
ever been undertaken. The research is built on visual analysis and is ap-
proached from two disciplines: art history and neuroscience.
After studying the photographic material gathered for this research I was
able to establish three different groups: linear order (groups of people or-
dered by height), couples, and people with chairs. The following step was
to study the state of the field regarding the visual-laterality phenomenon in
neuropsychology and perception psychology to build a theoretical frame-
work in which this phenomenon could be understood. The hypothesis
formed by this research is that if pictures are “read” from left to right (the
direction of writing of all Western languages), the opposite applies for
24 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

those languages written from right to left (such as Persian). Therefore

Iranian photographers would produce ‘mirror-images’ of those made by
Western photographers.
For chapter two, I explored the use and role of calligraphy in the Persian
painting tradition and the influence that this has had on nineteenth-century
Iranian photography. I analyzed the use and meaning of calligraphic in-
scriptions or text both within pictorial and photographic space. I estab-
lished three ways of categorizing the photographs: by elaboration of the
script; by content and meaning; and by spatial organization. All of these
classifications aim to make a difference between script with a decorative
purpose and script with a practical/informative purpose (calligraphy versus
plain text).
Chapter three is devoted to the topic of pose. I studied whether the use
of the traditional kneeling pose in Persian miniature painting and Qajar
portraiture has been inherited by nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photo-
graphy. Further, I have studied the difference of pose and objects held by
men and women in painting and later in photography. In order to achieve
this, I have made a thorough visual analysis of the pose and objects held
by the sitters both in the Iranian painting tradition and in nineteenth-cen-
tury Iranian photography. I have identified the typical poses used in nine-
teenth-century portrait photography in Iran that were mainly inherited from
the Persian miniature tradition. I also explored the influence of Western
poses on Iranian photo studios such as the changing from a kneeling or
squatting position to the sitting position due to the introduction of the chair
in the photographer’s studio in the same way this happened previously in
the painter’s studio.
In chapter four, I researched the understanding of space in the Iranian
painting tradition and the influence this has had on nineteenth-century
Iranian photography. I analyzed the formal use of space both in Persian
miniature painting and photography. The main research issues related to
the arrangement of space in Persian miniature painting that I am concerned
with in this chapter, are topics such as the non-linear perspective approach
or the isometrical perspective (also called the parallel perspective) to pro-
ject a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional picture plane; the
existence of multiple centres of attention (diffuse composition); the grid
layout structure; and the vertical composition/vertical perspective. I intro-
duced the kinds of compositions that can be defined due to the arrange-
ment of the elements in the pictorial or photographic space, and explored
the ones that could have been peculiar to nineteenth-century Iranian photo-
graphy as influenced by the Iranian painting tradition.
Chapter five is devoted to the interaction between Western and Iranian
photographers. I explored the influence that Western aesthetics in nine-
teenth-century photography has had on Iranian native portrait photography.
The group of indigenous photographers that were more exposed to this
INTRODUCTION 25

foreign influence was the court photographers, in contrast to the bazaar or

local photographers. I introduced in this section the Western photographers
that were active in Iran in the nineteenth century and focused on the ones
whose influence on Iranian photographers was more noticeable. How they
influenced the aesthetics of local photographers was an important issue.
Relevant for the present research was how this influence has changed the
four topics explored in the previous chapters: visual laterality, text/calligra-
phy, pose and space. In order to discuss this, it was essential to know
which Iranian photographers were working together with Western
photographers.
Depending on the position of the photographer, we can find Iranian
photographers whose work perfectly matches that of Western photogra-
phers (like some court photographers) and others that have a more indigen-
ous conception and representation in their work (like bazaar photogra-
phers). But the majority of them present, with more or less intensity, a hy-
brid aesthetic in their work.
My final goal in this book is to show through visual analysis of the
images that photographs are cultural products and to transcend Edward
Said’s orientalism by analyzing other constructed realities, those created by
indigenous photographers. Next to this, it is fundamental to emphasize the
remarkable difference between the Victorian way of representation and
other lesser-known peripheral models of representation, such as the Iranian
one.11 I advocate a place in the global history of photography for those un-
known, local photo-histories and for the indigenous photographers that
built it up. I address historical modes of representation and the need to
achieve intercultural approaches in the study of art in general and of photo-
graphy in particular. World Art Studies, the disciplinary field that is taking
into consideration these matters must be, therefore, a source of inspiration
and reference for photo historians.12

Notes

1 The art historian Geoffrey Batchen sees the early photographers as a rebuke both to the
modernists and post-modernists views of photography. The modernists see photography
as an imprint of nature, a tracing of reality, however crafted and shaped. The post-moder-
nists see it as an ever shifting product of culture, a representation that depends, as the
British critic John Tagg put it, “on the institutions and agents which define it and set it to
work”. Batchen in Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography steers a middle
course between the two positions. He argues that the early photographers were actually
deconstructing (in Jacques Derrida’s terminology) the opposition between nature and cul-
ture, reality and representation, showing them to be false. See Batchen 1997.
2 See: Afshar 1992; Barjesteh 2004 and 1999; Bohrer 1999; Damandan 2004; Scarce 1976:
1-22; Stein 1984: 257-292; Tahmasbpour 2007; Vuurman 2004, 2007 and 2011; Zokā
1997.
3 For a chronology of Western photographers: Vuurman 1995: 24-25.
26 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

4 Most of the Iranian photographers were active in big cities: 47 in Tehran, 13 in Isfahan,
11 in Tabriz, 9 in Shiraz. For Iranian photographers and biographies: Zokā 1997 (in
Persian). Also, Afshar 1992 (in Persian). For good insights into historical aspects of
Iranian photography, see: Adle 1983: 249-281; and into sociological aspects of Iranian
photography, see Sheikh 2004: 231-253.
5 The best sources of information are: Afshar 1992 and Zokā 1997. Further literature:
Tahmasbpour 2001 and 2007; Damandan 2001; Jalali 1998, (in Persian); Mahboob &
Nemati 2005, (in Persian); Semsar 2004, (in Persian); Sane 1990, (in Persian) and 2004,
(in Persian); Torabi 2003 (in Persian); Sattari 2006 (in Persian).
6 The photographic corpus selected for this research has been collected from all published
books about nineteenth-century Iranian photographs, all of them printed in Iran, from the
photo-archives in Iran (Palace Golestān, etc), and from private collectors (some of them
have their collections online).
7 The photographs printed in the books used while building up the corpus are hosted in
several archives in Iran: the biggest and most important one of all photo-archives is the
Golestān Palace Library in Tehran, which hosts around 43,000 photographs; the Institute
for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies; Majlis Library; Tehran University
Documentation Center; National Documentation Center; National Library; Documentation
Center of the Cultural Heritage Organization, all of them in Tehran; archives of Mashhad,
Isfahan and Tabriz. Several important private collectors should be mentioned here: Dr Iraj
Afshar, Arman Stepanian, Bahman Bayani, Bahman Jalali and Rana Javadi, Mansour
Sane (photographs from Shiraz) and Parisa Damandan (photographs from Isfahan), all in
Iran, and the Azita Bina and Elmar W. Seibel Collection in Boston, USA.
8 Nevertheless, in recent publications about Western painting-like photographs this is an im-
portant issue. Huge formats of photographs by Jeff Wall and the Düsseldorfer Schule
(Andrea Gursky, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, among others) are just some well-
known examples. See: Elkins 2007: 129-203.
9 See: Sheikh, 2004: 231-253 and Behdad 2001: 141-152. Layla Diba presented a paper on
this topic, “Qajar Photography and its Influence on Modern and Contemporary Persian
Painting” at the Qajar Era 2011 conference at St Andrews University, 27-28 August 2011
(her paper will be published in the proceedings of the conference).
10 Iran’s first institution of higher learning based on Western models. A special department
of photography was opened as early as 1851.
11 Throughout most of photographic history, these local photo histories have been dismissed
or slighted. For instance, in Peter Pollack’s Picture History of Photography (1969);
Beaumont Newhall’s 1982 revision of The History of Photography: From 1839 to the
present day; in Masterpieces of Photography, a 1986 compendium of highlights from the
George Eastman House Collection; in Mike Weaver’s Art of Photography, 1839-1989
(1989); Frizot, Michel, Neue Geschichte der Fotografie, Könneman, 1989; and Naomi
Rosenblum’s A World History of Photography, there are no references to any of these
“peripheral” or “local histories” of photography. Countries like Iran, Syria or Burma have
been completely neglected by those global photo-histories and if they have been men-
tioned at all it always has been through the work of Western photographers in those coun-
tries. An exception to this is Mary Warner Marien’s book, Photography. A Cultural
History, London 2002. This book benefits from two decades of new research into non-
Western photography.
12 Fundamental referents for this topic are: Zijlmans and van Damme, 2008; and Onians
2007.
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY
OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN

To the memory of Prof. dr. Iraj Afshar (Tehran, 1925-2011)

Upon the official request of Mohammad Shah (reigned 1834-1848), two

daguerreotype cameras had been sent to the Persian court as early as 1842,
one by the Russian government and the other by the British government.
Fate decided that the one sent from Russia would arrive first, in mid-
December 1842. The details of this fundamental historical event have been
researched in-depth by the leading scholar Chahryar Adle, and as he states,

the Russian set, a present of the Czar, arrived earlier. Nikolai

Pavlov, the young diplomat trained for the purpose, brought it to
Tehran and took the first photograph recorded in Iranian history in
presence of Mohammad Shah on the date mentioned. (Adle 2000: 1)

Due to recent research done by Adle, we can conclude that Pavlov took da-
guerreotypes at court as early as December 1842, so just three years after
the announcement of the daguerreotype process in Paris.1 Shortly after
Pavlov arrived in Iran, the French photographer Jules Richard (1816-1891,
later known as Richard Khan) was the first European photographer to work
in the Persian court. He arrived in Tehran in 1844 and, after the change of
king in 1848, his work expanded from teaching photography at court to
teaching photography to Iranian students in the Dār al-Fonun from 1851
onwards, Iran’s first institution of higher learning based on Western mod-
els, where a special department of photography had been opened.2 He mas-
tered the process of daguerreotype, which was his main teaching subject.
Unfortunately, to date only one of his daguerreotypes has been found,
hosted at Musèe d’Orsay.3
It was under Nāser al-Din Shah (reign 1848-1896) that photography was
really developed and different techniques learned and mastered. His inter-
est in photography began when he was very young, devoting time to learn-
ing the photographic technique and becoming, later on, a serious and
engaged amateur photographer. The Shah decided to bring this new inven-
tion close to his servants at court, and several rooms were reserved for
photography (known as Akskhāne-ye Mobārake-ye Homāyuni , i.e. “the
Royal Photographic Atelier”, established within the grounds of the
28 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Golestan Palace in 1858), as well as at the Dār al-Fonun. This academy

was envisioned by Nāser al-Din Shah’s prime minister Amir Kabir (1807-
1852) for the training of future military officers and civil servants. As sta-
ted by Maryam Ekhtiar and Marika Sardar,

Instruction was conducted in a pattern similar to that of the

European academies of fine art, where art was regarded as a scienti-
fic and scholarly discipline. Although the Dar al-Funun ultimately
altered art education, the age-old master-apprentice system contin-
ued to exist and was also important in the field of photography.4

The Shah’s encouragement of photography in Iran was promoted in two

ways: by inspiring his courtiers and actively engaging them in the photo-
graphic technique, and by providing Dār al-Fonun with professional photo-
graphers as teachers to prepare a solid generation of students that would
strengthen the basis of the new invention in Iran. Some were even given
the opportunity to refine their skills in government-sponsored training in
Europe, in workshops or on courses. It was also thanks to the Shah that
several books on photography were translated to be used as teaching mate-
rial at court or at Dār al-Fonun. According to Yahyā Zokā, in 1859, the
first book on photography by an unknown Iranian author was printed, 14
pages long and very small in format (6 x 15 cm) (fig. I). It was a handbook
to be used as an introduction to the new medium. Zokā and also Iraj
Afshar refer to a second book entitled Ketāb-e ‘aks by Mohammad Kāzim,
printed in 1863.5 As argued by the Iranian photo-historian Mohammad
Rezā Tahmasbpour, who has been working on this topic in-depth, soon
after the first technical books were translated, aesthetic, philosophic and re-
ligious debates were to follow.6 Both pioneers in the history of Iranian
photography, Iraj Afshar and Yahyā Zokā introduced in their books some
of those early publications, such as Qavā’ed-e aks va telegrāf (Principles
of the Photograph and Telegraph, 1880) and the book Aksiyye-ye hashar-
iyye (1889). These are among the pioneering books on theoretic precepts
of photography in Iran.
European professionals were brought to the court and to the Dār al-
Fonun to work as teachers, such as the Austrian August Karl Krziz (1814-
1886, active from 1851-1859 in Iran), and the Italians Fochetti (active in
Iran from 1851 onwards), Luigi Pesce (active in Iran from 1851 onwards),
Antonio Gianuzzi (active from 1859 onwards) and Luigi Montabone (ac-
tive in Iran in 1862, died 1877)7, and the Frenchman Francois Carlhian
(active from 1858 onwards). As remarked by Afshar, among the earliest
documents that inform us about the introduction of photography in Iran we
find the third volume of the Mer’at al-boldān-e Nāseri written by E’timād
al-Saltane (Sāne al-Dowle) in 1863-64.8 He says that,
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN 29

there are two sources of valuable information about French and

Italian photographers in Iran, the former active in the years 1857-60
and the latter dating from 1860-63. For our information about the
French photographers, we are indebted to an article by J. Qa’im-
Maqami based on documents in the French military archives at
Vincennes (no. 1673) containing reports by the head of the French
military mission in Iran. These mention that in 1857 two photogra-
phers named Carlhiée and Blocqueville accompanied the mission.
For our information on Italian photographers in Iran, we are in-
debted to Angelo Piamontese’s valuable study, “The Photograph
Album of the Italian Diplomatic Mission to Persia (Summer 1862)”.
The article deals in a comprehensive manner with the background
of the Mission and its members, including the two photographers
Luigi Montabone and Pietrobon (Afshar 1992B: 262-263).

Afshar quotes the relevant pages of E’timād al-Saltane’s book referring to

pioneer European photographers in Iran:

Towards the end of the reign of that pious King and Fighter for the
Faith, Muhammad Shah, may the Almightly clothe him in light,
Monsieur Richard Khān who at present teaches English and other
languages at Dar al-Funun used, with much toil, to take pictures on
silver plate. In the early part of the reign of our present Shah, may
our souls be sacrificed for him, when the Dar al-Funun was built,
Monsieur Krziz, the Austrian artillery instructor, did some photo-
graphic experiments on paper. Monseiur Focchetti, the biology tea-
cher, was the first person to use the collodion process at the Tehran
College: and Monsieur Carlhian who had accompanied Farrokh-
Khān Amin al-Dawle from Paris to Tehran in order to propagate the
science and methods of photography, made the use of the collodion
process widespread (Afshar 1992: 5).

Carlhian then taught the collodion process to Nāser al-Din Shah and to
Rezā Akkāsbāshi (1860). There is an album hosted at the Musée National
des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet where photographs taken by Carlhian, Pesce
and Gianuzzi are shown together with some watercolours collected by the
French colonel Victor Francois Brongiart (1809-1968).9 He became a tea-
cher at the Dār al-Fonun and did some experiments with cyanotype.10
Most probably Āqā Rezā (later Rezā Akkāsbāshi, 1843-1889) learned this
technique from him around 1863 and became the first Iranian photogra-
pher active in the Persian court. Brongiart was most probably responsible
for the introduction of Western props and paraphernalia in the Iranian
photographer’s studio as well as the typical Victorian poses: frontal and
hieratic. Being as he was one of the first Western photographers to work
30 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

as a teacher for Iranian students, he may have been an influential photo-

grapher for Iranians, both technically and aesthetically. Āqā Rezā, one of
the court’s children, became the first qualified photographer to work in the
Akskhāne. He was later awarded the title of Akkāsbāshi (Court
Photographer), and adopted the name with which he became known as the
first professional Iranian court photographer: Rezā Akkāsbāshi.11 Already
in 1857, Pesce took photographs of ancient cities such as Persepolis, while
Gianuzzi took photographs mainly of Mashhad. Both were active in
Tehran as well. It was also around this time that Nāser al-Din Shah became
actively involved with the new technique and photography became one of
his favorite pastimes. Nāser al-Din Shah is considered to be an influential
figure in the history of Iranian photography because he was a serious ama-
teur photographer himself, next to the fact that the expansion and develop-
ment of the technique and art of photography in Iran is indebted to his
supporting policies. He photographed everything and anything that be-
longed to him with overflowing enthusiasm. But his fame in the world of
photography, especially outside of Iran, is due to the numerous photo-
graphic portraits that he took of his wives. We can recognize the most in-
fluential and favorite of his wives by the number of times that they have
been depicted, and also because they present a noticeable complicity with
the Shah in the way that they have posed: Fātime Sultān Anis al-Dowle
(d. 1897) and Zobayde Amine Aghdas (d. 1893). According to the histor-
ian Abbas Amanat:

In the later years of his reign, the Shah complained of the stress
caused by the rivalry among his wives and their unending demands
on him. There were a number of influential wives of peasant back-
ground to whom he felt particularly attached. Contrary to princesses
and other members of the nobility, these women of low birth better
indulged the Shah’s undernourished emotional needs. Two of them
in particular, Fatima Sultan Anis al-Dawla (d. 1897) and Zubayda
Amina Aghdas (d. 1893), brought into the royal harem a certain
plebeian mentality and lifestyle – and, in the case of the latter, a de-
gree of vulgarity and homeliness – that appealed to the Shah be-
cause of their simplicity (Amanat 1997: 436).

The Qajar prince Malak Ghāsem Mirzā (c.1806-c.1861) was, according to

Zokā, the first Iranian photographer to be active in photographic technique
and produced some of the earliest examples of court photography in Iran.
Zokā argues further that he may have produced earlier daguerreotypes than
Richard Khān. 12
Montabone, who belonged to a family of professional photographers, in-
troduced hand-colored photography in Iran. The photographs taken during
his Italian mission were exhibited successfully at the international
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN 31

exhibition in Paris in 1867. He produced a well-known album entitled

Ricordo del Viaggio in Persia della Missione Italiana 1862. Three copies
of the album have been identified: one in the Biblioteca Marciana in
Venice, one in the Albumkhāne of the Golestān Palace in Tehran and a
third one in the Royal House Archives in the Hague, the Netherlands.13 In
the words of Tahmasbpour,

the aesthetics and style introduced by Montabone had a profound

influence on Iranian photographers working at the imperial court.
To date, no earlier examples of colored photographs in the Golestān
Palace other than the photographs of Montabone are identified and
so we can safely argue that Montabone’s photographs mark a revo-
lution in Iranian photography (Tahmasbpour 2007: 17).

Ernst Hoeltzer (1855-1939) and Antoin Sevruguin (late 1830s-1933) are

two of the more interesting and prolific photographers that were active in
Iran in the last decades of the nineteenth century. They not only stayed
longer and lived there for over 30 years, but married Iranian women.
Hoeltzer arrived to Iran for the first time in 1871, lived in Iran for over 30
years and married an Armenian woman in Isfahan.14 As a residing
European photographer in Iran, he produced a remarkable corpus of photo-
graphs, specially of Isfahan and the surrounding area. I will analyze his
work in chapter 5.
Sevruguin was born at the Russian embassy in Tehran as the son of a
diplomat and lived in Iran for over 30 years as a professional and highly
commercial photographer. His work’s aesthetics were remarkable. His
photography finds itself halfway between staged studio portrait and ethno-
graphic/anthropological documentary photography. Sevruguin’s work was
very well known by Western travelers and was often used in their travelo-
gues, although he was rarely acknowledged as the photographer. One of
the most shocking examples of this is the April 1921 National Geographic
Magazine, Modern Persia and its Capital, that I will analyze in chapter 5,
where many pictures taken by Sevruguin appeared with another author’s
name (Faye Fischer). Another well-known journal is Die Welt des Islams
by Dr Walter Phillipe Schulz published in 1917 which also contains several
uncredited photographs by Sevruguin.
W. Ordén (often spelled M. Hordet) was one of the most mysterious and
elusive photographers active in Central Asia at the end of nineteenth cen-
tury. His work produced in the Khānates of Khiva, Bukhara and Khokand
has been published in different books15, but to date, it was not known that
he also traveled through Persia at the end of the nineteenth century and that
he took many photographs there of landscapes, architecture and people.
Almost nothing is known of Hordet, except, as mentioned by Vitaly
Naumkin, that he traveled in Central Asia between 1885 and 1892.16 His
32 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

prints are captioned by writing directly on the negative and sometimes also
on the print itself in both French and Russian, but his name is signed using
Cyrillic print.
Looking unsuccessfully for the footsteps of the Iranian court photogra-
pher Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar (1849-1908) in Austria, I came across the
W. Ordén collection of photography hosted by the Museum of Ethnology
in Vienna. Being a totally unkown photographer active in the last decade
of the nineteenth century in Iran, I will devote some more space to him
here in order to properly introduce what I have been able to find so far.
The collection comprises 700 photographs from Central Asia and Persia.
Next to the collection, there are two letters written in German by the
photographer himself and signed “W. Ordén” in which he offers the collec-
tion (of photographs taken in Caucassus, Central Asia and Persia, as can
be read in the first letter) to the museum stating clearly his conditions. He
sent these two letters from St Petersburg. The first one was dated 19
March 1896 (fig. II) and the second one 7 April 1896 (fig. III). So, without
a doubt we can date all his photographs hosted in this collection as taken
before those dates.
In all the books that printed W. Ordén’s photographs taken in Central
Asia mentioned above, the photographer is identified as M. Hordet. The
accepted transliteration of the photographer’s name from Russian seems to
have been M. Hordet, but the two letters are signed by “W. Ordén”, so
both names obviously refer to the same photographer.
W. Ordén’s sepia-toned album prints hosted in this collection are in the
general range of 16 x 22 cm in size and mounted on board. As stated by
Kate Fitz Gibbon, “his negative numbering system gives some clue to his
prolific nature. Known prints span at least between the numbers 1504 and
1602, a few are numbered in the 1880s or 2000s, and many more appear
between 2745 and 2791”.17 Remarkably, in this collection I have found
numbers that go up to 4281 (a photograph taken in Erzurum), so quite a
lot higher than was known to date. In particular, the photographs that con-
cern this study, the ones taken in Persia or that depict Persian types, go up
to number 3189. The subjects of the photographs include studio portraits
(often collages of two, three or four photographs), landscapes (there are
several cemeteries), archeological sites and street scenery. There are several
photographs of the Golestān Palace (figs. IV and V), of cemeteries of
various cities in Iran (figs. VI and VII), a caravanserai in Shiraz (fig. VIII),
a tower overlooking the Caspian see in Anzali (fig. IX), and several col-
lages of Persian types, that I shall introduce in chapter 5. So far I have
been able to locate two institutional archives and two private collections
that hold photographs by Ordén: The Ethnology Museum in Vienna, the
KunstKamera in St Petersburg, Anhaita Gallery in Santa Fe, and Elmar
Seibel Collection in Boston. I will introduce his work further in chapter 5,
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN 33

since he constitutes a new (unkown) name in the history of photography in

Iran.
We know of three Western women active in Iran in the Qajar Era, the
French archeologist and journalist Jane Dieulafoy (1851-1916, active in
1881-82), the English Isabella Lucy Bishop-Bird (active 1890) and the ar-
cheologist Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868-1926, active in Iran in 1911).
Dieulafoy and Bell’s travels were inspired and conditioned by their interest
in archeological research, whereas that of Bishop-Bird was basically moti-
vated by an interest in traveling and being faced with unknown realities. I
will briefly introduce each one of them, as well as a few Iranian female
photographers, in chapter 5.
Aside from the professional European photographers brought to the
Persian court on the Shah’s request, there were other foreign visitors and
travelers to Persia who actively or passively participated in the develop-
ment of photography in Iran. Western nineteenth-century travelers to Persia
came from different interests and cultural backgrounds. There are three ca-
tegories in which these travelers can be classified according to the motiva-
tion that led them to travel: diplomats and travelers on political or military
missions; travelers on archeological missions; and tourists (this last group
was very small in numbers). Some of these early travelers to Iran wrote
and published their studies and memories in the form of books and travelo-
gues. Here it is important to stress the fact that the amount of foreign trave-
lers to Persia was quite insignificant compared to other countries in Asia.
A good way to prove this is by comparing the amount of guidebooks pub-
lished at the end of the nineteenth century in different countries in Asia. If
we just consider the most popular British publisher, John Murray’s guide-
books, the first guidebook to Persia (as an independent short chapter within
the whole guidebook) was published in 189518, by which time Murray’s
guidebook to Japan was in its 5th edition and to India in its 3rd edition. In
the 1854 Murray’s guidebook to Turkey (3rd edition) we find just two
pages referring to Persia, precisely the route number 60 from Erzurum to
Persia.19
Scholarly travelers took, bought or commissioned photographs to illus-
trate their publications. A number of art historians and archeologists com-
missioned quite extensive photographic surveys, among them the German
photographer, Iranologist and writer Franz Stolze (1836-1910) who stayed
in Iran from 1874 to 1881; the French archeologist and photographer
Jacques Jean Marie de Morgan (1857-1924)20 who was in Iran in 1897;
and the German Friedrich Sarre (1836-1910) who traveled in Iran and
Turkestan in 1897-98 and 1899-1900.21 Some of these travelers, as in the
case of Sarre, used photographs by Sevruguin without crediting him. This
was, not surprisingly, very much the norm in the nineteenth century, when
copyright issues were unheard of. They concentrated on the landscape,
archeological sites and daily life of local people living in small villages.
34 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Other travelogues are those by the French writer Henry René D’Allemagne
(1863-1950) and the Swedish geographer and explorer Sven Hedin (1865-
1952). D’Allemagne’s travelogue, Du Khorasan au Pays des Bakhtiaris.
Trois mois de voyage en Perse, was published in 1911 in four volumes.
Hedin’s travelogue Zu Land nach Indien, published in Leipzig in two vo-
lumes in 1910, presents 308 images that include his photographs, waterco-
lors and drawings. At least two of the photographs were probably taken by
Sevruguin, since he acknowledges the authorship by another photographer
as by an Armenian photographer.22
As noted above, the first professional Iranian court photographer was
Rezā Akkāsbāshi. He was son of Esmā’il Jadid al-Eslāmi, a well-known
court servant and brother of Nāser al-Din Shah’s private doctor. He became
a court servant while still a child. In 1863, while he was still a servant, the
Shah decided that he would be trained as a photographer under the gui-
dance of Carlhian. I will repeatedly come back to this photographer
throughout my book since a few of his photographs will be analyzed in the
different chapters. Rezā Akkāsbāshi’s students, who worked at court or as
teachers at Dār al-Fonun, became the first generation of Iranian photogra-
phers. For a graphic idea of the amount of court photographers (both non-
Iranian and Iranian) active during the reigns of Mohammad Shah and
Nāser al-Din Shah (both with or without the title Akkāsbāshi), and of the
photographers working at Dār al-Fonun, see fig. X.
Ali Khān Amin Hazrat (active from 1873, d. 1888) was the son of the
Ābdārbāshi of Nāser al-Din Shah. As explained to me by Iranian photo
historian Rezā Sheikh in e-mail communication (January 2012),
“Ābdārbāshi is someone who is in charge of daily refreshments of all sorts,
mostly on the liquid side (tea, sharbat...), also light sweets etc, someone
who not only took care of the king but also his guests. Their job was extre-
mely important as they also made sure no one poisoned the king, hence
very trusted people, very close to the king”. In 1876, he became the head
of the Akkāskhāne in the Golestān Palace, responsible for training and con-
troling other photographers, such as Mirzā Hoseyn Ali Akkās (active
1877-1889). Album 129, kept at the Golestān Palace, has 70 photographs
of different places taken by Ali Khān Amin Hazrat in 1881. From 1882 to
1887, he took the position of his father as the Shah’s Ābdārbāshi.23 Mirzā
Hoseyn Ali Akkās was his most advanced student. He was sent to Europe
for further studies in photographic technique. He became Nāser al-Din
Shah’s private doctor, and the head of the Akkāskhāne for some time. He
accompanied the Shah on his second trip to Khorasan and took 76 photo-
graphs on the way to Mashhad, 95 photographs in Mashhad and 81 photo-
graphs on the way back, now kept in three boxes at the Golestān Palace
Library.24 The brother of the famous court painter Mohammad Ghaffāri,
Kamāl al-Molk (1852-1940), Sāne al-Molk who was himself a painter,
used many of his photographs as models for his paintings, an example of
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN 35

how photography also influenced Persian painting at the end of the nine-
teenth century.25 He was undoubtedly one of the most prolific photogra-
phers of his time.
Abbās Ali Beyk (active from 1863 onwards) was a student of Rezā
Akkāsbāshi as well. He supervised the Akkāskhāne and helped Rezā
Akkāsbāshi to develop his photographs. In 1870, the Shah sent him to
Arak to take photographs before a planned trip of the Shah with his mother
to that land. When he came back to the court, 79 photographs taken by
him were printed by Rezā Akkāsbāshi and placed in two identical albums:
one for the Shah and one for his mother, both kept at the Golestān Palace.
Later on, in 1868, the first studio outside the court was opened and run by
Abbās Ali Beik, under the supervision of Rezā Akkāsbāshi.26
Yusof Khān Akkās (active from 1892 onwards), a court photographer in
the last years of Nāser al-Din Shah’s reign, also was granted the
Akkāsbāshi title. In the Golestān Palace there are three albums (Nos. 109,
110 and 111) with a total of 145 photographs taken by Yusof Khān Akkās
between 1894 and 1895.27
Mirzā Seyed Ali is no doubt one of the best Iranian photographers of
the Qajar Era. His photographs can be found easily among family albums
in private collections. He assisted his father, who was himself mostowfi.
As explained to me by Sheikh, “mostowfi is like a clerk and accountant
combined, they kept track of all kinds of financial transactions, property,
selling and buying, also any kind of financial flow in or out of the treasury.
They had the ability to keep daily accounts and supply all kinds of reports.
Any ruler, provincial, local, or country wide, king and his boys, all had
their own mostofi. Mostowfi al-mamālek was the head of all the mostofis”.
When his father died, he took over his position. There are many photo-
graphs with his studio’s stamp. In album No. 278, kept at the Golestān
Palace, there are many of his photographs.28
Manucher Khān Akkās (active around 1882), was active in the last part
of the reign of Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā in Tabriz. Zokā explains that in the
Golestān Palace there are 83 photographs in two albums (Nos. 434 and
401) that bear Manuchehr Khān’s signature.29
Mirzā Ahmad Khān Sāne al-Saltane (born 1847), studied medicine at
Dār al-Fonun and learnt photography by himself. He was so attracted by it
that it later became his profession. Dust Ali Khān Nezām al-Dawle sent
him to Europe to study photography, graveure, etc, for 15 months. Upon
his return to Iran, he started working at the Akkāskhāne and also at Dār al-
Fonun. He was also actively working theoretically on photographic techni-
que in 1873-1882 and wrote a book about photography entitled Amal-e
Akkāsi o Resāla‘i dar Akkāsi, which was presented to Nāser al-Din Shah.
Later on (without royal permission or request) he went to Europe and spent
over 7 years there.30
36 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Aghayanz Armeni (active around 1890-1910), was an Armenian photo-

grapher, active in the last years of the reign of Nāser al-Din Shah and the
first years of Mozaffar al-Din Shah’s. He opened a photo studio together
with the Iranian photographer Amishu and other colleagues. Several of his
photographs are kept at the Palace Golestān Library (albums 285 and 292).
There also is an album with forty-eight photographs in the Zokā private
collection.31 His work follows the aesthetics of pictorialist photography,
best represented in the West by Margaret Cameron and in Iran by Antoin
Sevruguin. One of his favorite topics was portraits of dervishes using on
them the light, atmosphere, composition and pose of the pictorial tradition
in photography.
Joseph Papaziant (active from the 1870s onwards) was an Armenian
photographer and also a well-known theater actor. In 1875, he opened a
studio in Tehran. Due to his outstanding work, the Shah gave him a royal
medal (Shir-o Khorshid) that he printed on his card.32
Mohammad Hasan Qajar (active during the last years of Nāser al-Din
Shah, between 1890 and 1895), worked as a court photographer specializ-
ing in military matters. There is a well-known album with photographs of
prisoners in Qazvin, most probably a project commissioned by the Shah,
taken in 1895 (album No. 334 at Golestān Palace).33
Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar attended the Dār al-Fonun and, in 1869, traveled
to Europe to study photography. He lived in Paris for one and a half years
and in Salzburg for three years. He started his career as a professional
photographer immediately on his return from Europe, and was placed in
charge of photography in Dār al-Fonun.34 Later in the reign of Mozaffar
al-Din Shah he became the head of the Imperial Printing Press and his
name stamp can be seen at the end of the books printed in that press.35 He
is one of the photographers whose work I will present throughout my
book. As noted by Afshar, the best source of information about him is his
own account (written in 1896-7), which is reproduced in Mr Iqbāl
Yaghmā’i’s article “The Beginning of the Craft of Photography and
Stereotyping in Iran”.36
Amir Khān Jalil al-Dawle Qajar (d. 1888), a prince photographer whose
talent has been remarked by Zokā and Adle. In 1896, he took several
photographs in Khorasan that were pasted into an album now held at the
Golestān Palace (album 438).37
Mirzā Jahāngir Khān Akkās (active 1890s to 1910s), worked at the court
both with Nāser al-Din Shah in his last years of rule and with Mozaffar al-
Din Shah. Unfortunately, no specific albums with his photographs have
been found so far, and his photographs are hard to find scattered among
different collections.38
Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri (active from the 1880s onwards), Mirzā
Jahāngir Khān Akkās’s father, worked in Nāser al-Din Shah’s court. He
learned the photographic technique when he was quite young. Several of
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN 37

his photographs are kept in albums at the Golestān Palace Library. His
work is especially interesting for my research, since he was fond of using
inscriptions within the photographic space. He placed his signature within
cartouches and in the same way as the illuminators did. Most of the sitters
depicted in his photographs are kneeling in the traditional Iranian pose and
hold objects borrowed from the Persian painting iconography.39 I will
come back to him repeatedly, since his work is very interesting for my re-
search, especially concerning the relation of text/calligraphy and image.
Another important Iranian photographer, Ali Khān Vali Hākem (1845/6-
1902), deserves close attention. He was a member of a distinguished Qajar
family, his father having had a long career as diplomat and governor. The
most important event in his young life occurred when he accompanied his
father to St Petersburg in 1855 for several years. During that time, he
studied and learned photography.40 Ali Khān Vali’s photograph album
documenting his career as a governor at various places in Azerbaijan
(Northwest Persia) between 1873 and 1896, is of virtually unprecedented
quality and character. His work will be introduced and analyzed in chapter
5, since it bears some interesting elements such as the field studio para-
phernalia used while taking portraits of people he met during his travels.
In Shiraz, there was a whole family of photographers. Mirzā Hasan
Akkāsbāshi (1854-1916) was the first photographer of the family. When he
was 16 years old, he emigrated to Bahrain where he met an English photo-
grapher who taught him the photographic technique. Four years later he
traveled to India and settled in Mumbai for 20 years. There he kept on im-
proving his photographic skills with another English photographer, who
was also his student of Persian. He started working as a professional
photographer when he was 24 years old. During the last eight years of his
stay in Mumbai, he worked as a professional photographer and then re-
turned to Shiraz. In 1894, he opened a studio in Bushehr, the first one to
open in Fars province. Later on, he opened a studio in Kazerum and in
1895, he went back to Shiraz where he did the biggest part of his produc-
tion as a photographer.41 His work, and also that of his family, is interest-
ing for my research, especially due to the use of text within the photo-
graphic space, pots of flowers and the understanding of the photographic
space in general, as we shall see with examples in the different chapters of
this book. Mirzā Mohammad Rezā Akkāsbāshi (1862-1902) was the broth-
er of Mirzā Hasan (1853-1915) and started taking photographs in 1886. He
traveled, like his brother, to Mumbai and learned the retouch technique
with the English photographer T.B. Steward. He ran his brother’s studio
while he was traveling in Irak or in India, where he also worked as profes-
sional photographer.42 Mirzā Habibollāh Chehrehnegār (1896-1942) was
the son of Mirzā Hasan, and Mirzā Fatollāh Cheherhnegār (1877-1932)
was his grandson. Both also traveled to India and settled in Mumbai for a
while.
38 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

I will, throughout the book, introduce some historical information related

to the history of photography in Iran or to the life and work of the photo-
graphers considered. This brief historical introduction should be taken as
an aid for the general reader to understand the book in its proper historical
context. At the end of the book, there is an appendix that will be useful as
a chronological guide to historical facts and information about the photo-
graphers considered in this book. For further reading in English about the
history of photography in Iran, Iraj Afshar’s Remarks on the History of
Early Photography in Iran remains a good source of information. The best
sources in Persian on the history of photography are the classics by Yahyā
Zokā and Iraj Afshar. In the last ten years there has been a remarkable in-
crease in research done on Iranian photographers by leading Iranian photo-
historians. A detailed bibliography (by Francesca Bonetti, Alberto Prandi
and Khadijeh Mohammadi Nameghi) will be published in a special issue
of “History of Photography” (HOP) on nineteenth-century and early twen-
tieth-century Iranian photography due in early 2013 (guest editors: Rezā
Sheikh and Carmen Pérez González), with all publications in Persian.

NOTES

1 See: Tahmasbpour 2001: 17. For detailed information about the introduction of the da-
guerreotype in Iran, see: Adle 1983: 249-280; Adle 1994: 577-578; and Adle 1997: 6-11.
2 See: Ekhtiar, Maryam, Modern Science, Education and Reform in Qajar Iran: The Dār
al-Fonun, unpublished PhD Thesis, New York, 2003, available through UMI; “From
Workshop and Bazaar to Academy: Art Training and Production in Qajar Iran”, in Diba
1998; “Nasir al-Din Shah and the Dar al-Funun: The Evolution of an Institution”, Qajar
Art and Society, in Journal of the Society for Iranian Studies, Vol. 34, Nos. 1-4, 2001;
“The Shah’s Royal Museum: Art Presentation and Authority in Nineteenth Century Iran”,
in Murraqqa’e Sharqi: Studies in Honor of Peter Chelkowski, AIEP, Republica San
Marino, 2007: 83-92.
3 Bonnetti & Prandi 2010: 23.
4 See: Maryam Ekhtiar and Marika Sardar, “Nineteenth-Century Iran: Art and the Advent
of Modernity” in The Time of Art History at http:/www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/irmd/
hd_irmd.htm
5 For more information about these two books, see: Zokā 1997: 291-293; and Afshar 1992:
11.
6 Tahmasbpour has considered this topic in several articles and books. See, for example:
Tahmasbpour 2010 and Tahmasbpour 2001.
7 For a good source of information on the Italian photographers active in Iran in the nine-
teenth century, see: Bonnetti & Prandi 2010.
8 As referenced by Afshar: Mer’at al-buldān-e Nāseri, Tehran 1295, iii: 20-1; see Storey
PL, i/1, 344, no. 444 (1), ed (2).
9 The album consists of more than 150 photographs and watercolors. For a good analysis
of this album, see: Sheikh, Rezā, “The Souvenir Album of Colonel Victor Brongiart,
Artillery Attaché at the service of Nāser al-Din Shah, 1852-1856”, in Aksnāme (Iranian
Photographic Quarterly), Vol. 3, No. 11, Spring/Summer 2003, Tehran: 9-2.
10 The cyanotype process was discovered by John Herschel. A low-cost permanent print
made by putting an object (i.e. a drawing or plant specimen) directly in contact with paper
BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN IRAN 39

impregnated with iron salts and potassium ferricyanide, then exposing them to light. The
paper turns dark except where the object blocks the light. The resulting image is white on
a blue ground. As quoted from Rosenblum 1997: 651.
11 For further information on Rezā Akasbashi, see Zokā 1997: 47-57; and Tahmasbpour
2007.
12 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 8-17. For further information about this
photographer, see: Adle 1983.
13 See Vuurman 2004: 23.
14 For a good source of information on Ernst Hoeltzer and a wide selection of his photo-
graphs, see Damandan 2004.
15 Naumkin, V., Caught in Time. Great Photographic Archives. Samarkanda. Reading:
Garnet Publishing Limited; Naumkin, Vitaly, Caught in Time. Great Photographic
Archives. Khiva. Reading: Garnet Publishing Limited; Cagatay, Ergun, Once Upon a Time
in Central Asia, Tetrafon, Istanbul 1996; Valeriia Prishchepova, ‘Vzgliad so storony: urda,
dzhaliap, bacha/A View from the Outside: Urda, Jalap, Bacha’ (po fotokollektsiiam MAE
RAN 1870-1920 gg.), in Grezy o vostoke. Saint Petersburg: MAE-RAN, 2006; Fitz
Gibbon, Kate, ‘Emirate and Empire: Photography in Central Asia 1858-1917’, in Social
Science Research Network (online resource), Sept. 2009: 1-34. I thank Heather S.
Sonntag, photo historian expert on 19th century Central Asian phootgraphy for help on lo-
cating some of this literature.
16 Naumkin, V. and Nedvestky, A.G.(1997). Bukhara: Caught in Time. Reading: Garnet
Publishers: 10.
17 Fitz Gibbon 2009: 19.
18 Wilson, Sir Charles, A Handbook for Travellers in Asia Minor, Transcaucasia, Persia,
etc, London, John Murray Publishers, 1895.
19 The author outlined a route from Tabriz to Tehran, and an alternative one (described as
shorter and more picturesque, from Sultaniah to Kasvin): see, Handbook for Travelers to
Turkey, describing Constantinople, European Turkey, Asia Minor, Armenia, and
Mesopotamia, London, John Murray Publisher, 1854: 270-271.
20 There are 351 photographs taken by Morgan in his first assignment in Iran organized in
four albums at the Palace Golestān Library: Nos. 1397, 1398, 1399, 1400. I thank Ms
Khadijeh Mohammadi Nameghi for this information.
21 Sarre, F. (1910), Iranische Felsreliefs. Berlin.
22 Hedin, S. (1910), Zu Land nach Indien, 2 volumes, Leipzig: S.A. Brockhaus.
23 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 79-82.
24 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 83-85.
25 For an insightful study of this famous family of painters, see: Diba, L. S., ‘The Qajar
Court Painter Yahya Ghaffari: His Life and Time’, in Hillenbrand 2000: 83-96.
26 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 58-59.
27 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 125-127.
28 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 121-124.
29 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 193-196.
30 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 75-78.
31 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 197-205.
32 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 62-65.
33 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 119-120.
34 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 98-108.
35 Afshar 1992: 9.
36 Afshar 1992: 8.
37 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 128-134.
38 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 135.
39 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 117-118.
40 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

40 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 66-74.

41 As summarized and translated from Persian from the book: Sane 1990: 9-12.
42 As summarized and translated from Sane 1990: 13-14.
1 VISUAL LATERALITY: THE RELATION-
SHIP BETWEEN THE DIRECTION OF
WRITING AND COMPOSITION

To the memory of Yael Langella (Paris, 1953 - Lisbon, 2007)

If one observes the movements of a human being in possession of a

camera (or of a camera in possession of a human being), the
impression given is of someone lying in wait. This is the ancient act
of stalking which goes back to the Paleolithic hunter in the tundra.
Yet photographers are not pursuing their game in the open savanna
but in the jungle of cultural objects, and their tracks can be traced
through this artificial forest. The acts of resistance on the part of
culture, the cultural conditioning of things, can be seen in the act of
photography, and this can, in theory, be read off from photographs
themselves.
Vilém Flusser (Flusser 2000: 33)

If right and left had not been relegated to the traffic regulations or to
the terrestrial and celestial ceremonial, Science and Philosophy
would have known how to use them fittingly.
Silvio Ceccato1

The main research question of this chapter is whether, and if so, how the
direction of writing and reading of Iranian nineteenth-century photogra-
phers influenced the composition of the studio photographs of this period.
To understand the relation between the two, I have defined groups of
photographs to show different ways of composition due to the different
reading habits (left-to-right on the one hand, right- to-left on the other).
This research is built on visual analysis and from two frames of reference:
art history and neuroscience. First, I will define the phenomenon of visual
laterality, then I will introduce the photographic corpus identified as show-
ing the effect of the phenomenon of visual laterality. I will finish the chap-
ter with a historical survey of the main conclusions and results found both
in the fields of art history and neuroscience that support the main hypoth-
esis of this chapter. It is important to note that the art-historical literature
42 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

that relates to this phenomenon belongs mainly to the first half of the twen-
tieth-century, whereas the literature in the field of neuroscience is recent,
mostly produced in the last fifteen years. This apparent gap in the art-his-
tory literature can be explained by the fact that in the field of neuroscience
an important group of scholars focused their research on answering and
giving an appropriate theoretical framework to the questions posed by
some art historians several decades ago, though in a very discrete way. The
most recent literature in this field has an interdisciplinary approach.

1.1 Definition of visual laterality

Scripts can be written in many directions. The Japanese scripts specialist

Akira Nakanishi has elaborated nine models (fig. 1a) to summarize the dif-
ferent directions of scripts. Ancient Phoenician and Aramaic scripts were
written in (a) only; the descendants of these scripts, Arabic, Hebrew,
Persian, Urdu, and others, are now written in the same way, i.e., from right
to left, the opposite direction of all Western languages (b). The neurologist
Chris McManus has made a schema of the evolution of the direction of the
script in the different languages (fig. 1b), which is very helpful to under-
stand the remarkable number of languages written today with a right-to-left
(leftwards) script.2
Would this remarkable difference in the writing direction used by differ-
ent cultures in any way affect the composition in works of art, and in parti-
cular in the photographic image, since the direction of writing and reading
is exactly the opposite in these two groups of languages? The area of
research of this study is Iran in the nineteenth-century and the material of
study is photography. The language in question is Persian. My conclusions
will be directly connected to photography. Is there a difference in composi-
tion between the photographs made by Westerners and by Iranians resulting
from this? In other words, I want to know if photographs show evidence of
visual laterality, and visual laterality is defined here as the conditioning of
the composition of the image by the direction of writing.
How does visual laterality manifest itself, if at all? One of the topics that
is fundamental to understanding visual laterality is to know and define its re-
lation with laterality caused by handedness3 and hemisphere specialization,
in other words, if there is a relationship between left and right in pictorial
and photographic space and left and right in the brain. In this particular case,
the condition of the composition of the photographic image. My hypothesis
is that the fact that Persian is written from right to left implies a production
of mirror images to those produced by Western photographers. For the pur-
poses of this discussion a mirror image is understood to be a reflection with
respect to the human’s plane of symmetry, that is, a left-right mirror image.
Asymmetries of the pictorial space could arise from asymmetries of the
brain or from cultural conventions. The psychologists Charles G. Gross
VISUAL LATERALITY 43

and Marc H. Bornstein suggest that both contribute to the anisotropy4 of

art but in different ways.5 I will start this research with the second cause of
anisotropy of the photographic space, the cultural convention due to the di-
rection of writing of different scripts. Aestheticians have frequently as-
serted that left and right in a picture are absolutes. The Swiss art historian
Heinrich Wölfflin (1864-1945) called attention to the fact that pictures
change appearance and lose meaning when turned into their mirror images.
He realized that this happens because pictures are “read” from the left to
the right, and naturally the sequence changes when the picture is inverted.6
Wölfflin noted that the direction of the diagonal that runs from bottom left
to top right is seen as ascending, the other as descending. Any pictorial ob-
ject looks heavier at its right side.7 Therefore, my hypothesis is that, if the
only condition for that rule of composition is that the pictures are “read”
from left to right (like the direction of writing of all Western languages),
then the opposite applies to the rest of the languages, i.e. those written
from right to left (like Persian): Iranian photographers produce mirror-like
images to those made by Western photographers. We can see Wölfflin’s
thoughts summarized in fig. 2a, where the final point of the scanning path
(bottom right) is the heaviest point of the image (painting or photograph).
Thus, Western artists would avoid placing an object there and would place
it in the bottom left where it does not have such weight as in the symmetri-
cal point. In fig. 2b you can see the Persian (Arabic, Urdu, etc.) version
where the final point of the path (bottom left) is the one to be avoided by
Iranian artists. We can clearly see that both figures are mirror-reversed
images of each other:
The art historian Mercedes Gaffron carried Wölfflin’s investigation
further. According to her,

the observer experiences a picture as if he was facing its left side.

He is subjectively identified with the left, and whatever appears in
that part of the picture assumes the greatest importance. (Gaffron
1950: 312)

This agrees with the art historian Alexander Dean’s observation of the so-
called stage areas of the theater:

as a curtain rises at the beginning of an act, the audience can be

seen to look to its left first. The left side of the stage is considered
the strong one. In a group of two or three actors, the ones on the
left dominate the scene. (Dean 1946)

In Chinese theater, on the other hand, the important positions are to the
audience’s right. It is interesting to know whether this can be extrapolated
to photographs.
44 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

As stated by the art historian Rudolf Arnheim,

it will be evident that when the observer experiences facing the left
side, a second and asymmetrically located center is created in the
picture at that side. Just like the center of the frame, this subjective
center carries importance and can be expected to influence the com-
position accordingly. A contrapuntal relationship between the two
centers results. (Arnheim 1965: 23)

Like the area around the center of the frame, the area of the subjective cen-
ter is able to carry more weight. There is, then, a curious difference be-
tween being “important” and central, at the left, and being heavy and con-
spicuous at the right, in the words of Arnheim. The same could have been
said by an Iranian researcher writing about composition in Iran. Only he
would talk about a curious difference between being “important” and cen-
tral, at the right, and being heavy and conspicuous, at the left. Concluding
these observations on the right-left phenomenon Wölfflin reminds his read-
ers that he has described, but not explained it, and he adds: “Apparently it
has deep roots, roots that reach down to the nethermost foundations of our
sensuous nature” (Wölfflin 1941: 90). At present the most common expla-
nation runs along empiricist lines. The reading of pictures from left to right
is a habit taken over from reading the books.8
Like Gaffron, the art historian Theodora Haak describes a European ten-
dency of compositions where the movement enters the picture from the
left, and where the left side shows more clarity and distinction, while the
right leaves more room for the play of imagination. She explains this ten-
dency by a preponderance of right-eyedness. However, in a later work,
considering the opposed direction of movement in East Asiatic art, she
abandons this theory and assumes that a fundamental difference in mental
structure must be the cause of the directional contrast in Western and
Eastern art.9 In contrast to European pictures, Theodora Haak found out
that in the pictorial representations of Eastern Asia one finds a marked di-
rection of movement from right to left. It manifests itself with particular
distinctiveness in the so-called makimono, the long scroll, which must be
observed while being unrolled uninterruptedly from right to left on the
floor.10
There is some empirical evidence to support what some art critics have
said about a picture that loses something of value when mirror reversed.
As described by the scholar Martin Gardner in his interesting book The
New Ambidextrous Universe. Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror
Reflections to Superstrings, David B. Eisendrath Jr, a New York photogra-
pher (he does not mention when), prepared a set of 50 scenic photographs
so that each picture had two reproductions, one a mirror image of the other.
The pairs were shown one at a time to various viewers who were asked to
VISUAL LATERALITY 45

designate which one of each pair they liked best. Scenes that had an over-
all left-right symmetry were chosen as often in one form or the other, but
if the scene showed a composition with strong asymmetry, there was about
75 percent agreement among subjects on the choice of one picture over its
mirror twin. All these viewers read from left to right. When the same pic-
tures were shown to viewers who read only Hebrew, which goes from right
to left, there was a tendency to prefer the mirror reversals of those pictures
that had been preferred by left-to-right readers.11 Further, Gross and
Bornstein ask themselves, if, as aestheticians say,

mirror reversal changes the meaning of a painting, why have so

many artists, from Raphael and Rembrandt to Munch, remained ap-
parently indifferent to the reversal of their originals when repro-
duced as prints or tapestries? And why, conversely, did a few, such
as Dürer and Van Gogh, take great care to etch originals in their
mirror image? (Gross & Bornstein 1978: 34).

They point out that, in fact, objective studies (meaning here, based on sta-
tistics) involving a number of observers and different paintings have lent
little support to the generality of the claims of art historians, that mirror-
reversing paintings consistently changes the content or tone of the original.
A possible explanation for the failure of experimental psychologists to find
the perceptual differences between paintings and their mirror images
claimed by aestheticians might be, as Gross and Bornstein suggest, that the
psychological experiments involved collections of both symmetrically and
asymmetrically organized compositions. In contrast, aestheticians exempli-
fy their point with highly asymmetrical paintings, with marked perspective
and lighting differences between the two sides that clearly do alter on
reversal.
In sum, the visual-laterality hypothesis is supported by the ideas of clas-
sic art historians and aestheticians such as Arnheim and Wölfflin. Their
theories have not been contradicted since then and their ideas are still valid
in the field of art history and provide an appropriate theoretical background
for my research.

1.2 Nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography

I have organized the photographs in three different groups according to

their type of composition: the first group, linear order, consists of images
in which a group of sitters have been depicted arranged by their height; the
second group, couples, consists of images in which a couple has been de-
picted, one sitter sitting and the other standing; and the third group, chairs,
a sitter is depicted standing and resting one of her/his hands on the chair.
46 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Linear order
The first group of studio portraits of groups is where people depicted are
organized by their height. This group was established after finding a group
photograph that depicts five Iranian children (fig. 3), the image responsible
for the whole classification that will be shown here. If we compare figures
3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 made by Iranian photographers and figures 8, 9, 10, 11
and 12 made by Western photographers, we can clearly see that some are
mirror images of the others. The first photograph (fig. 3), made by an
anonymous Iranian photographer, shows a group of Bakhtiyari12 children,
who posed in height order, from smallest to tallest, if we read it in the
Iranian way, but from tallest to smallest if we read it in the Western way.
From the clothing the children are wearing, it seems that they were court
children. The names have been identified as (right-to-left) Afrasiyāb,
Bahman, Shatar, Seifollah and Sohrab. Another photograph (fig. 4), made
by Iranian photographer Rezā Akkāsbāshi, shows Prince Firouz Mirzā’s
children, from right to left: the infant Prince Abd al-Hoseyn (Farmān
Farmā), Princess Ma’sume (Esmat al-Saltane), Princess Sorush al-Saltane
(Hazrat-e Owliyā) and Princess Malek-Tāj (Najm al-Saltane).13 The photo-
graph was taken around 1860. Taken most probably by Rezā Akkāsbāshi
(Tahmāsbpur 2001: 152), the next image (fig. 5) presents the sons of
Mohandes-e Mamālek in Tehran, ordered again by height, standing on a
Persian carpet and performing a military salute. These three images are the
clearest photos showing the difference in composition on the basis of vi-
sual laterality. The next photograph of this group (fig. 6), also taken by
Rezā Akkāsbāshi around 1866, shows this tendency as well. It depicts two
men sitting (Ismail and Asad al-Khān if we start with the one at the right
of the image) and one standing at the left side of the photograph (Nāser al-
Manushi). The last one (fig. 7) can be seen as two groups of people orga-
nized by height: the first one on the back row is formed by four men and
one boy; the second one on the front row is composed of four children also
organized by height. Its author is an unknown Iranian photographer.
Direction in composition is one of the two factors that determine bal-
ance, weight being the other one. This first group of pictures is particularly
interesting as far as the direction of the image is concerned, but it also
shows clearly what Wölfflin said about the ascending-descending diagonal.
He said that the direction of the diagonal that runs from bottom left to top
right is seen as ascending, the other one as descending, which is what is
happening in the Western photographs that we present here and which de-
monstrate exactly the opposite (opposite meaning here “mirror-like” com-
positions) to what happens in the Iranian photographs.
The first photograph of this group of Western photographs (fig. 8), taken
by the Czech photographer Ignác Schächtl in Tábor (Czech Republic)
around 1900, presents a group of children that are organized by height like
VISUAL LATERALITY 47

the ones shown before, but in this case the order mirrors the first ones. The
same is true for a family portrait (fig. 9), taken by Czech photographer
Josef Jindrich Sechtl in Bozejov (Czech Republic) in 1911 and which pre-
sents the Novak Family. The composition of these two images is a mirror-
reversed version of figures 3, 4 and 5. The same happens with a photo-
graph of a group of Khiva women with their children (fig. 10), taken by
Ordén not later than 1886. The next photograph (fig. 11), a daguerreotype
made by the French photographer E. Lorichon in Spain around 1850. A fa-
mily portrait by the Spanish photographer Julio Derrey (fig. 12) taken
around 1890 is mirror-like image of figure 7.

Couples
The second group, the couples, is actually a smaller version of the first
group. In this kind of photographs, a couple is depicted and one person is
always sitting, the other one standing up. We can compare figs. 13, 14, 15
and 16 made by Iranian photographers with figs. 17, 18, 19 and 20 made
by Western photographers. The Western photographs are mirror-like
images of the Iranian ones. The one who is sitting is usually the person of
highest social rank, the older one, or in the case of children, the smallest
child (figs. 13, 17). In the photographs taken by Iranian photographers, the
chair is, in the majority of the cases, placed at the bottom right side of the
picture, i.e. avoiding the heaviest weight point, in Iranian composition (see
figure 2b). However, in the photographs taken by Western photographers,
the chair is almost always placed at the bottom left side of the picture,
avoiding the heaviest weight point (in a Western composition). I found one
portrait that deserves a more detailed observation since the two men de-
picted are actually one and the same person (fig. 14); the photograph is an
interesting double-exposure picture of one of the sons of Bahā al-Molk ta-
ken by Rezā Akkāsbāshi.14 In this case hierarchy plays no role.
There is another difference between Western and Iranian studio portrait
photography in the way couples or groups of people are composed and
arranged. In Western photography we can find many examples of studio
portrait photographs of couples formed by a man and a woman. As photo-
graphy historian William C. Darrah states,

among the more abundant surviving carte de visite portraits are

those of newly married couples and husband and wife at various
ages. The most striking convention is the almost universally used
pose of the husband seated and the wife standing, with one hand on
her husband’s shoulder. (Darrah 1981: 36).

In contrast to this, only rarely do you find studio portrait photographs of

couples composed of man and wife in Iranian photography in the
48 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

nineteenth century. There are portraits of a man (the Shah) with several of
his wives, but those are relatively rare too. According to Iranian historian
Guity Nashat,

with the exception of rulers and wealthy individuals, most marriages

were monogamous. Polygamous marriages within the well-to-do
were rare but were not unheard of: men took second wives when
their first wives reached menopause. However, the prospect of shar-
ing a husband with another woman was a threat hanging over the
heads of many wives.15

What we can find prolifically in Iranian photography is portraits of two

men, normally one sitting depending as a sign of respectfulness (the older
one normally is sitting) or hierarchical reasons (normally the socially high-
est rank is sitting).
In this group of couples, we can also identify a subgroup of mothers and
fathers holding a child on their lap. It already has been demonstrated by
groups of neurologists16 that in most of the photographs of parents holding
children on their lap, the babies or children are sitting on the left part of
their parent’s bodies. This bias direction is well established, but why it is
to the left, remains unclear. Among several explanations proposed, the
handedness explanation posits that most people, being right-handed, hold
the child on the left side to keep their right dominant hand free for other
tasks related to infant care.17 The heartbeat explanation posits that the
heartbeat, being more detectible on the holder’s left side, makes the left
hold more soothing for the infant.18 The attention explanation credits the
bias to the selective activation in the holder of right-hemisphere-lateralised
perceptual, emotional and intentional systems, which predispose a left hold
by directing the holder’s attention to the left.19 Nevertheless, even if this
basic directional effect is well established, many details are still uncorrobo-
rated, uncertain or inconsistent across studies, and further research is
needed.
I have collected some of these photographs, both nineteenth-century
Iranian and Western, and I have analyzed them from a formal point of
view. The compositions of these photographs agree with the results pre-
sented by the neurologists only when we consider Western photographs.
An important number of the Iranian photographs (figs. 21 and 22) have re-
versed compositions (mirror-like compositions) compared to the Western
ones (figs. 23 and 24). This, again, raises the question of whether the direc-
tionality of the script may play a role in this kind of composition. This to-
pic remains open to further and in-depth research.
VISUAL LATERALITY 49

Chairs
The third group, chairs, is a clear example of Wölfflin’s hypothesis. The
group of photographs that I present here (figs. 25, 26, 27 and 28, taken by
Iranian photographers) and 29, 30, 31 and 32 (taken by Western photogra-
phers) are just a few of many examples of it. The first photograph of this
group (fig. 25) is a very interesting picture as far as the viewpoint of the
photograph is concerned. The photographer has lowered his plane in order
to fit the child fully within the picture’s frame and therefore, the chair has
got a very dominant role, almost a majestic one. The child is posing with a
lot of charm and in a very natural way. The next photograph (fig. 26) de-
picts Sultan Ahmad Mirzā Qajar in a very self-conscious pose for a young
boy. He is wearing the clothes and regalia typical of court children and he
even holds the omnipresent sword of Qajar painting portraiture. Nāser al-
Din Shah is looking extremely self-conscious and elegant (fig. 27), resting
his left hand on the most photographed court chair, the highly carved roco-
co one in which he immortalized most of his wives. The last image of this
group of Iranian photographs (fig. 28) is the one that depicts Hājji Ali
Khān E’temād al-Saltane (Minister of Security Affairs and Governor of
Golpāyegān and Khānsār). In the Western group of pictures (figs. 29-32)
we can once more appreciate the mirror-like effect. In all these Western
images, we can notice that the object located on the right side (in this case,
the chair) seems to be heavier than the one located at the left side (as
Arnheim points out). Is this visual laterality caused only by the choices
made by the photographer (conscious or not), or can it also be produced
by the person or group of people depicted? The homogeneity in the pose
of those depicted in nineteenth-century portraits points to the fact that,
most probably, the photographer was the one who arranged the scene in an
already established way, before the sitter came, and the sitter would just
follow the directions of the photographer.
The three forms of composition that I have defined above, agree with
the examples of stimuli used in the aesthetic-preference experiment already
proposed and used by the neurologists S. Christman and K. Pinger and
later on by Health et al., which consisted of three geometric elements ar-
ranged laterally to form a composition: a vertically-oriented solid black
rectangle to represent Weight, an outline of a elongated triangle to repre-
sent direction and a stippled hat-like shape to represent Interest (fig. 33).20
The three basic compositions I have described at the beginning of this
section can be identified with some of the examples of stimuli presented
by Christman and Pinger. They can be identified as one of the examples of
stimuli shown above:
50 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

– linear order and couples, Iranian composition: figures 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,

13,14,15 and 16 are examples of stimuli “D” bottom (balanced weight,
absent interest, and right-to-left directionality).
– linear order and couples, Western composition: figures 8, 9, 10, 11, 12,
17, 18, 19 and 20 are examples of stimuli “D” top (balanced weight,
absent interest, and left-to-right directionality).
– mother/father and child on her/his lap, Iranian composition: figures 21
and 22 are examples of stimuli “D” bottom (balanced weight, absent in-
terest, and left-to-right directionality).
– mother/father and child on her/his lap, Western composition: figures 23
and 24 are examples of stimuli “D” top (balanced weight, absent inter-
est, and right-to-left directionality).
– chairs, Iranian composition: figures 25, 26, 27 and 28 are examples of
stimuli “A” top (right-biased weight, left-biased interest, and left-to-
right directionality).
– chairs, Western composition: figures 29, 30, 31 and 32 are examples of
stimuli “A” bottom (left-biased weight, right-biased interest, and right-
to-left directionality).

Arnheim wrote: “An unbalanced composition looks accidental, transitory,

and therefore invalid” (1969). This however depends on whose eyes are
looking at that particular artwork. He also wrote that looking at those unba-
lanced compositions, we get the impression that the process of creation has
been suddenly and accidentally frozen somewhere in its course. Since
change is needed, the stillness of the work becomes a handicap.21 Foreign
observers of nineteenth-century Iranian photographs, such as the ones pre-
sented above, could wrongly perceive them as not well composed, but this
is a judgment based on ignorance of the existence of other possible modes
of representation. Actually, that is what happened in India. As the art critic
and photo-historian Judith Mara Gutman pointed out, “in the West the
great majority often laughed at photographs like these (non-perspective
photos), thinking of them as ‘mistakes’”.22 In 1895, a correspondent for
the Practical Photographer, a magazine published in London for the large
audiences soaking up information about photography, caught a glimpse of
the swell of indigenous photographic activity in India. He found it repul-
sive, citing “the bazaars that were ‘infested’ with native photographers
who were bringing down the level of photography all over India”, as stated
by Gutman.23
There are, however, exceptions in both cases, in the Western a small per-
centage, and in the Iranian a larger one.
VISUAL LATERALITY 51

Experiment
After I finished writing my PhD thesis, I started an experiment to test the
validity of the visual-laterality hypothesis. I would like to thank the leading
British neuropsychologist Chris McManus here for his support and gui-
dance during this experiment. I digitalized all the photographic material
that I had been able to gather through the years devoted to this research
from Iran and from Spain. I decided to choose one particular Western
country instead of considering the whole Western world, just for reasons of
balance. Spain is my homeland, whose photographic heritage I have been
neglecting, and this experiment has given me the possibility to learn a lot
about the aesthetics of Spanish photographers in the nineteenth century. I
classified the photographs precisely in the three compositional groups de-
fined above. My aim with this esperiment was to get statistical data that
would definitely support the visual-laterality hypothesis or force a reconsi-
deration of its principles. The results obtained are as follows (Table 1).

Linear Order Couples Chairs

LR RL Total LR RL Total L R Total

IRAN 3 14 17 22 69 91 55 67 122
17% 83% 24% 76% 45% 55%

SPAIN 13 5 18 54 28 82 109 51 160

72% 29% 66% 34% 68% 32%

Table 1 Comparative percentages Iran versus Spain for the groups: Linear Order,
Couples and Chairs.

Currently, I am gathering new books published in Iran in the last months

that will let me have more material to further confirm the percentages pre-
sented in Table 1. This experiment and the interpretation of its results, was
published in the academic journal Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain
and Cognition.24 In this recently published article, I have referenced the
latests publications in the field (from June 2009 to January 2011), many of
them not used in this book.

Movement and visual laterality

Up to this point I have only analyzed studio portrait photographs that are
static. Now I would like to consider those that also suggest movement to
see if writing and reading habits have an influence on directionality
52 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

(direction of movement of the scene). As the psychologist Jerre Levy

points out, it may be that those pictures in which movement, implied or
potential movement is present, are preferred by Western observers when
the movement is from left to right. If so, monolingual readers of Hebrew
and Arabic would prefer the opposite versions of such pictures from those
preferred by readers of European languages.25 Levy carried out an experi-
ment with Western observers to see their preferences for 97 vacation slides
or their mirror versions. He found that left- and right-handers differ in their
preferences for mirror versions. Serious experiments similar to this have
been undertaken by different groups of neurologists around the globe and I
will devote some time to them and their results in the section concerned
with the neurological approach to the right-left problem.
The next three images taken by unknown Iranian photographers, present
a potential movement towards the left, like the direction of writing of the
Iranian script. The first image of this group (fig. 34) depicts a man riding a
horse and crossing a river. The horse is going from right to left and his
position on the bottom left corner stresses the fact that he is moving
leftwards. The movement in the river brings to the viewer the feeling that
the horse is really having difficulties crossing the river. The next image
(fig. 35) is one of the most beautiful images that I have seen in nine-
teenth-century Iranian photography. Five small children are depicted sitting
on a bench with a leftward reclining pose. The last image of this group
(fig. 36) depicts a man riding a motorbike in the right-to-left direction.
Nevertheless, it is important to stress here that we have to be very cautious
with this particular study case, since it is very difficult to prove this direc-
tionality in photography. In fact, I believe that this preference on the direc-
tionality of the scene is almost impossible to prove in photography. on the
contrary, in painting directionality can be clearly proved, especially in
Persian miniature painting. To support my hypothesis, I have identified
many stone reliefs and paintings of earlier times in Iran. Is there a tendency
to show the movement on the right-to-left direction, like the direction of
reading and writing in Iran? Further below, I will present some of those
paintings and stone reliefs.

Wölfflin remarked:

one could mean that our art – in the sense of our writing – must al-
ways have the inclination, to present movement from the left to the
right (marching soldiers, running horses). It is certain that the right
side of the picture has a different value from the left one. It decides
the general tendency of the picture, that is, its movement to the
right. (Wölfflin 1941: 83)
VISUAL LATERALITY 53

A good example of this is the motion studies of horses by the photographer

Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). Further, Arnheim points out that,

since the image is read from left to right, the pictorial movement to-
wards the right is perceived as easier, as if it demanded less effort.
If, on the contrary, we see a rider crossing the image from right to
left, it will seem to be overcoming a greater resistance, using a
greater effort, and therefore going more slowly. (Arnheim 1969: 43)

These phenomena can be related (observable when visual representations

are compared with their specular images) with the findings of psychologist
H. C. Van der Meer in the sense that “spontaneous movements of the head
are executed more quickly from left to right than in the opposite direction”
(Van der Meer 1958) and that, when experimental subjects are requested to
compare the speeds of two locomotions, one from left to right and the
other from right to left, they perceive the movement towards the left as fas-
ter. As stated by Arnheim,

it is possible to conjecture that the movement towards the left ap-

pears as the winner of a greater resistance; it pushes against the cur-
rent instead of letting itself be taken by it. (Arnheim 1969: 43)

Since Persian is read and written from right to left, the movement of an im-
age, a scene, also will be depicted and read in that direction. After examin-
ing and going through a vast number of Iranian paintings and stone reliefs,
I can conclude that this is true most of the time. In the majority of cases,
in the Iranian paintings and rock reliefs, the horse is running from right to
left, whereas in the Western paintings and reliefs the horse would be run-
ning in from left to right.
There are many examples of this kind to be found in painting, but I will
show here just a few examples of these kinds of works in Iranian art. In
Fath Ali Shah Received by Mirzā Rezā Qoli Monshi al-Molk in Sawdasht
(fig. 37), the story is happening in the right to left direction. The important
figure in the picture is on the left, Fath Ali Shah enthroned on the Sun
Throne, is receiving gifts from a vizier, and other men are also waiting to
give him some presents. The arrow of reading is clearly in the right-to-left
direction. This painting belongs to the manuscript of the Shāhanshāhnāme
(Book of the King of the Kings) that was donated in 1818 to the
Österreichische National Bibliothek.
The Pictorial Cycle of Eight Poetic Subjects was painted by an unknown
artist in Shiraz in the mid-eighteenth century; here I have selected one of
the eight works that constitute this cycle (fig. 38). Notice that the horse is
running towards the left.
54 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Shirin Presents a Jug of Milk to Farhād (fig. 39) was painted by an un-
known artist in Iran in the late fifteenth-early sixteenth century. Here we
see that the scene is happening again in the right-to-left direction. Again,
the horse is running towards the left side of the picture.
Military Review with Fath Ali Shah and Prince Hoseyn Ali Mirzā (fig.
40), painted by an unknown artist in Shiraz is an interesting example of
the right-to-left directionality of the happening of the scene of a ritual en-
counter of Fath Ali Shah and a prince during a military review. As de-
scribed by the Islamic art historian Adel T. Adamova,

The prince has fallen to his knees before the Shah and is identified
by an inscription above his head with his title, Farmān Farmā
(Prince Hoseyn Ali Mirzā, Fath Ali Shah’s son who was governor
of Shiraz in 1799-1835). Hoseyn Ali Mirzā’s three sons appear at
the upper left side, with their names (Akbar Mirzā, Shāhrokh Mirzā
and Timur Mirzā) inscribed above their heads. (Adamova 1998: 73)

The Shah is mounted on horseback at the center of the picture, dominating

the composition and all those around him and the scene is clearly happen-
ing in the right-to-left direction. In Fath Ali Shah at the Hunt (fig. 41), we
can see again the horse running from the right to the left. This stone relief
was executed by Abdollāh Khān in Rayy, circa 1820-30. Next to the main
scene, there are other more peripheral scenes that also reveal this leftward
directionality (see, for instance, the one happening in the right top corner).
These are but a few examples of this phenomenon, and anybody who may
open a book about Persian miniature, will be able to gather many examples
of the kind that I have just shown. I have also researched miniatures that il-
lustrate Urdu (also right-to-left script) literary texts and I have found the
same consistent leftward directionality in the way the scene is happening
and in the direction of the depicted horses.
We can easily find contemporary examples of this directionality in
Iranian comics, on Iranian websites (especially interesting to see is the mir-
ror-like composition of the design of the websites that have an Iranian sec-
tion and an English one) and also in Iranian films where the movement of
the camera reveals the influence of reading habits on composition and
directionality in Iranian cinema. This also supports the visual-laterality hy-
pothesis but it is a new field of research that goes beyond the scope of the
present book but that deserves further and in-depth research.
In sum, I can conclude that there is a tendency in nineteenth-century
Iranian photographers to produce mirror-like images of those produced by
their Western colleagues. This tendency has been proven to be consistent
in the three groups of composition that I have analyzed in this chapter: in
the group linear order, Iranian photographers tend to organize the group of
sitters by height, from the shortest to the tallest in the leftward direction,
VISUAL LATERALITY 55

whereas the Western photographers tend to organize the group in the oppo-
site direction; in the group couples, the person that is sitting on the chair in
Iranian photographs is normally placed on the right side of the photograph,
whereas in the Western photographs he is placed almost always on the left
side of the image and this holds true for the third group, chairs, as well.
There is also consistency in the leftward directionality of the scene in
Persian miniatures, which gives further evidence to the visual-laterality
phenomenon.

1.3 Visual brain and visual perception in art

Neurologist Semir Zeki’s statement that “all visual art is expressed through
the brain, whether in conception, execution or appreciation, and no theory
of aesthetics that is not substantially based on the activity of the brain is
ever likely to be complete, let alone profound” (Zeki 1999: 1), made me
aware of the importance of trying to understand what is happening in the
brain in relation to visual art. One of my goals in this section is to find out
if Zeki’s theories can provide new insights into my subject.
The neurologists have learned enough about the visual brain in the last
quarter of the last century to be able to say something interesting about
visual art, at least at the perceptual level, as Zeki believes. He hopes that
with his, in my opinion, highly interesting book Inner Vision. An
Exploration of Art and the Brain, “he can contribute to the foundations of
a neurology of aesthetics or neuro-aesthetics, and thus for an understand-
ing of the biological basis of aesthetic experience” (Zeki 1999: 2). The
neurobiological view that he presents in his book, is that art has an overall
function, which is remarkably similar to that of the visual brain and that it
is actually an extension of it and therefore obeys the same laws that govern
the visual brain. Actually, everything seems to point to this emerging field
becoming fundamental in the decades to come since it is a joint effort of
art historians and neurologists to try to understand more about the process
of production of a work of art and the role the brain and its functions plays
in that process. In May 2008, an institution named Neuroaesthetics has
been founded in Berlin, notably by leading scholars in both fields, art his-
tory and neuroscience.26 The recently published book World Art Studies:
Exploring Concepts and Approaches27, which acknowledges in the first
place art as a panhuman phenomenon, constitutes an effort to study art
from all times and regions of the world in an integrative manner from a
variety of disciplinary perspectives. Especially interesting for my research
is the article written by the neuroart-historian John Onians,
“Neuroarthistory: Making More Sense of Art”28, in which he explains with
examples why a neuroscientific approach is likely to contribute immensely
to world art studies. As Onians states,
56 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

if we know something of the factors that might have affected the

unconscious mental formation of the makers and viewers of art in a
particular place at a particular time, neuroscience helps us to under-
stand how those factors might also have affected the appearance of
that art (Onians 2008: 284).

Onians’s recently published book Neuroarthistory. From Aristotle and

Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, offers an account of this new field in the hu-
man sciences: neuroarthistory.29 The number of art historians making use
of neuroscience is growing and this helps them to understand and explain
better the creative process and the response to art. In the words of Zeki,

vision is an active process, not a passive one that we have long ima-
gined it to be. Even the most elementary kind of vision is an active
process. Art is in his opinion also an active process, a search for es-
sentials; it is a creative process whose function constitutes an exten-
sion of the function of the visual brain. (Zeki 1999: 7)

Therefore, if we understand the connections of brain and vision, we will be

able to understand better how the aesthetical experience is happening.
The most complex organ in the human body is the brain. Since ancient
times, the brain’s structures and functions have been prodded, observed and
experimented on. A major impetus to the study of the physical workings of
the brain came in 1791, when the Italian physician and physicist Luigi
Galvani (1737-1798) showed that electricity exists as a force within the
brain cells. His experiments were later confirmed by the German physician
and physiologist Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) in 1850, who found
that neurons emit pulses of electricity that travel at around 200 mph. The
Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkinje (1787-1869), in 1838, found that
nerve cells consist of two parts: a nucleus similar to other cells and a set of
fibbers which emanate from the nucleus – these were later identified as the
axons and dendrites. In 1870, the Italian physician Camillo Golgi (1843-
1926) made the observation that there were literally billions of neurons
making up the central nervous system and established that the neurons in
the brain sent information to the motor nerves and that information from the
sensory nerves was sent to the brain for analysis. These initial discoveries
paved the way for modern neuroscience, which in recent years has yielded
enormous amounts of information about the physical functions of the brain.
Yet, very little of the brain’s mystery has been unraveled. What is known of
its characteristics is due, in large part, to the efforts of biological psycholo-
gists such as Roger Sperry (1913-1994) and Michael S. Gazzaniga. One of
the brain’s most intriguing aspects is its hemispheric specialization. This re-
fers to the division of tasks within the right and left hemispheres of the
brain. In humans, the left side of the brain is dominant in language and
VISUAL LATERALITY 57

analytical skills; whereas the right side is dominant in spatial tasks, facial
recognition, prosody (tonal qualities of speech), and emotion. In addition,
the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body while the
right hemisphere controls the left side. Also, normally the right side of the
visual field is projected to the left hemisphere of the brain and the left field
to the right hemisphere. The right part of the body is controlled by the
dominant left half of the brain, and the left part of the body by the right half
of the brain. Therefore, the left hand is controlled by the right half of the
brain and the right hand by the left half of the brain. See the following dia-
gram of the visual pathways from Ramón y Cajal’s classic Textura del siste-
ma nervioso del hombre y de los vertebrados (fig. 42).30
In the past thirty years, the evolution of the knowledge of the structure
of the brain and its functions has been remarkable. Nowadays, we know
that there is a specific part of the cerebral cortex that deals specifically with
vision. It is instructive to recall, as Zeki points out, that it is only recently
that neurologists accept that the retina connects with only one well-demar-
cated part of the brain, the primary visual cortex, and that there is therefore
a localization for vision in the brain.31 See fig. 43 for a diagrammatic re-
presentation of the connections between the eye and the brain32 and fig. 44
for the division of functions within the visual brain.33
But how can brain functionality be related to left-handedness and left-
ward scripts at all? This has been one of the most disturbing and confusing
points in the whole process of trying to understand the visual-laterality
phenomenon, but an important one, since it is the linking point to connect
my work with previous research in neurology.
In a recent article written by G.D. Schott and J.M. Schott, Mirror
Writing, Left-handedness and Leftward Scripts, the authors say that they
have found that a particularly high prevalence of left-handed mirror writing
has been reported among those whose native languages are traditionally
written in a leftward direction, including Chinese, Japanese and Hebrew.
They concluded that,

Innate lefthanders and those whose languages are written leftward

thus share an unusual facility for left-handed mirror writing, an ob-
servation that may have implications for understanding hemisphere
specialization in relation to handedness (Schott & Schott 2004).

I wonder if what is said for mirror writing is also valid for mirror composi-
tion (in this case, mirror composition in photography), since in the end, it
is a matter of reading and moving the eyes in one direction or the other.
And in this sense, I will present the actual situation related to this topic
nowadays. In their article, Schott and Schott wrote that they have observed
that,
58 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

a surprisingly large number of reported left-handed mirror writers

are those whose native languages have traditionally been written
and read leftward. This is evident from various individual reports of
Japanese and Chinese patients, most of whom mirror-wrote after
(usually) left hemispheric vascular lesions, and the polyglot who,
following a head injury, selectively mirror-wrote and read Hebrew
script, while his normal reading and writing of Polish remained
(Schott & Schott 2004: 1850).

The high prevalence of mirror writing reported in healthy individuals and

the patients whose languages are typically written and read from right to
left is striking, as we can conclude after reading the above-mentioned arti-
cle. The authors wrote that this finding cannot be attributed to population
differences in handedness. Left-handedness is no more frequent among
Asians than Westerners, and right-handedness has predominated in all cul-
tures for at least 5000 years. Both consonantal phonetic (Hebrew) and
ideographic (Chinese and Japanese) languages are implicated. This sug-
gests that, although ideographic languages are extensively processed in the
right hemisphere, it is less the structure and more the leftward direction of
these languages that is important and that drives, or is driven by, the con-
tralateral right hemisphere.34 The neurologist J.R. Skoyles goes on to state
that it may well be not only the direction of writing itself but also the right
hemisphere involvement in the leftward direction of eye movements and
the left visual fields that are important.35
The neurologists A. Pollatsky and S. Bolozky, did an experiment that
showed that eye movements, the covert scanning of letters and mirror-im-
age perception of words, are linked to the two visual fields. Leftward
scripts (scanned with leftward eye movements) are read through the visual
window extending into the left visual field (rightward ones are read
through one extending into the right visual field).36 Visual fields and eye
movements are also connected to the two cerebral hemispheres. The left vi-
sual field is connected to the right hemisphere and the right with the left
hemisphere. Also, each hemisphere controls eye movements directed in the
opposite direction (the right hemisphere controls leftward eye movements
and the left hemisphere rightward ones), so images scanned through the
left visual field into the right hemisphere are also reciprocally controlled
by this hemisphere.37 Further, a group of Japanese neurologists wrote an
article as an answer to the one written by Schott and Schott, in which they
make a correction regarding the direction of writing in Japanese.38 At the
moment, neurologists only seem to agree on the fact that further studies in
other languages are warranted, and it is especially important to investigate
languages that have been variously written in leftward and rightward direc-
tions. These studies can be very relevant to further understand how this
mirror-like image happens in the photographic image produced by Iranian
VISUAL LATERALITY 59

photographers, always assuming that the mirror-writing phenomenon can

be identified with the mirror-like image. Actually, in a more recent article
written by G.D. Schott, he states that even if many individual cases of ac-
quired mirror writing are reported among Chinese and Japanese people,
these findings need to be interpreted with some caution, as the definition
of leftwards direction of language is complex, and variables include the di-
rection of the vertical and horizontal lines of script, letters and hieroglyphs,
and changes in direction of written language over time39, in a clear refer-
ence to the corrections made by the group of Japanese neurologists.
Unlike handedness, which appears to be at least to some degree geneti-
cally determined, the direction of reading and writing seems to be merely a
matter of convention. Around 1500 A.D. there were as many scripts writ-
ten and read from right to left as there were written and read from left to
right. With the expansion of European culture in the centuries that fol-
lowed, left-to-right scripts came to predominate (see McManus diagram,
fig.1b). It is noted by Skoyles, that in those societies in which script direc-
tion changed, writing was not important in propagating religious beliefs. In
other cultures it has taken on this role, largely through the belief that writ-
ten religious works contain the “word of God”. Since such writings are be-
lieved to be holy, it is central to the religion to propagate them un-
changed.40 Skoyles suggests further that the convention of leftwardness
has been preserved due to the central importance of the Torah and the
Koran in the Jewish and Arabic societies, dating back to an earlier period
when the leftward script, that was used to write them, reflected right hemi-
spheric reading processes.
In sum, accepting that we can assure an intrinsically parallel phenomen-
on between mirror script and mirror composition in the pictorial or photo-
graphic space, I am able to benefit from this research and conclude that
not only the direction of writing but also the right hemisphere involvement
in the leftward direction of eye movements and the left visual fields are
important and play a role in mirror writing and, therefore, on the visual-
laterality phenomenon. However, further studies in other languages are
warranted.

1.4 Asymmetries of the photographic space: Brain

mechanisms or artistic conventions?

Asymmetries of photographic space could arise, as already mentioned be-

fore, from asymmetries of the brain or from cultural conventions. Both of
them seem to contribute to the anisotropy of art but in different ways. One
artistic asymmetry that appears to be universal in this way is profile orien-
tation. Portraits are rarely full-face.
One pioneer study made by the neurologists Chris McManus and N.K.
Humphrey, found that the majority face leftward in 1,474 painted portraits
60 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

produced in Western Europe between 1500 to the present.41 I am not aware

of a similar study made with non-Western paintings. But I have so far gone
through around 500 Western studio portrait photographs from the nine-
teenth-century and a higher number of them, indeed, face leftwards.
Similarly, with Iranian portraits I found that there are less examples of pro-
file orientation in the leftward direction, but still the bias is dominant on
the left direction. The results obtained after pursuing an experiment with
Spanish and Iranian portrait photographs are as follows (Table 2).

L R Total
IRAN 229 216 445
52% 48%
SPAIN 312 198 510
61% 39%
Table 2 Comparative percentages Iran versus Spain for the group: Profile
orientation.

The neurologist Hans-Joachim Hufschmidt asserts that eighty percent of

right-handers drawing a human profile direct it towards the left. The prefer-
ence for the left profile direction is traced back to the early Greek period
in paintings, drawings, coin portraits, gems, cameos and vase portraits.
Fifty thousand objects have been analyzed. A 60% prevalence of face di-
rection towards the right occurs in cultural centers of the Mediterranean be-
fore 600 B.C. Before the early Greek period, the Assyrian, Egyptian and
Sumerian cultures faced more profiles to the right. This tendency for the
right profile direction can be traced back to Stone Age cave drawings. The
profile shift from right to left occurs in the early Greek period and is re-
lated to a shift in script and in letter profile at the same time. This profile
shift occurs simultaneously with an acceleration of intellectual and cultural
development, which also influenced our present culture.42
So profile orientation appears to be a function of brain laterality, not
direction of reading, suggest Gross and Bernstein. Nevertheless, it is not
possible to reach such a conclusion before further experiments are done
considering subjects literate in right-to-left scripts. When a face is fixated
centrally, the half of the face in the left visual field is processed by the
right hemisphere. As stated by the neurologists C. Gilbert and P. Bakan,
“face recognition is a right hemisphere function and, when right-handed
people look at the two halves of a front view of a face, the half of the face
in the left visual field looks much more ‘like the person’ than the other
half” (Gilbert & Bakan 1973). Thus the tendency for portraits to locate
profiles in the left visual field presumably reflects the fact that facial in-
formation would be perceived more readily and accurately by the majority
of people (i.e. right-handers). Similarly, as shown in fig. 45, it is the
VISUAL LATERALITY 61

expression on the half of the face in the left visual field that usually deter-
mines the right-handed viewer’s impression of it.43 Although the faces are
enantiomorphic44, right-handers tend to see the lower face happier than the
upper one, whereas the reverse is true of left-handers.
In contrast to profile orientation, other aspects of visual anisotropy ap-
pear to reflect cultural conventions. Wölfflin and others, have suggested
that “individuals typically enter a picture at the left foreground and proceed
along a specified path or ‘glance curve’ into the depth of the picture and
over to its right-hand side” (Gross & Bornstein 1978: 36). He points out
how this direction scan lends an aesthetic dimension of movement in gra-
phic art:

Movement from left to right in a painting is perceived as easier and

faster, while movement from right to left is slower and perceived as
having to overcome
resistance. The former signals attack or approach; the latter signals
withdrawal. In addition, the diagonal “/” is often associated with as-
cent and triumph, while “\” is associated with descent and defeat.
(Wölfflin 1949)

Wölfflin believed that the left-to-right glance curve represented a funda-

mental aesthetic vector. However, the glance curve in Oriental art appears
to be in the opposite direction, as I have already shown earlier in this chap-
ter with some examples of Iranian paintings and engravings. Thus the di-
rection of the glance curve in both painting and theater (as we have pointed
out above) appears to be a cultural convention, presumably related to the
direction of reading, and I believe that the same is true for photography.
The form of this path is best represented by the curve shown in figs. 46a
and 46b. Figure 46b shows the curve as seen from above; figure 46a shows
it as seen in perspective. It begins in the left foreground, penetrates towards
the depth, then turns over towards the right.45
Gaffron states that,

to follow the glance curve seems to be our natural way of viewing

– so natural, in fact, that the process remains unconscious and we
become aware of it only by its effects, which cause the above men-
tioned phenomenal changes on reversal. (Gaffron 1950: 317)

But, as Gross and Bornstein suggest, the term “glance curve” may be a
misnomer, since studies of eyes movements across both Eastern and
Western pictures do not reveal glance curves in either direction.46 They
further argue that,
62 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Rather such studies suggest that the eye roams over a picture in an
arbitrary manner, only stopping to rest on salient features. The
glance curve may be some kind of covert cognitive scanning with
its direction set by reading habits. Or, alternatively, it may reflect a
cultural organizing principle implicit in graphic art. (Gross &
Bornstein 1978: 35)

The results of a recent study made by the neurologists W.H. Zangemeister,

K. Sherman and L. Stark47 seem to demonstrate that those classical stu-
dies’ conclusions were, indeed, wrong. Scanpaths, the repetitive sequences
of saccadic eye movements, occurred when subjects viewed slide projec-
tions of both realistic and abstract art, a result that contrasts with previous
theories that suggested that the eye moves freely over a picture in an arbi-
trary manner. This group of researchers explains in the conclusion of their
paper,

the eye movement experiments reported here of subjects looking at

abstracts paintings have shown that abstract images are viewed by
the same top-down, perceptual-cognitive processes that drive active
looking or scanpaths in viewing realistic paintings, scenes and ob-
jects. (Zangemeister 1995: 1023)

In sum, it seems that the glance curve theory is not accepted, since it con-
tradicts the results found with recent eye-scanning experiments done by
neuropsychologists. Asymmetries of the painting and/or photographic
space do arise from asymmetries of the brain and from cultural conven-
tions. One artistic asymmetry that appears to be universal is profile orienta-
tion. It has been demonstrated that in the majority of Western paintings the
face is shown in the leftward direction. A replica of McManus’ experiment
should be undertaken with paintings done by artists literate in a right-to-left
script language.

1.5 Reading habits versus aesthetic preferences:

A neurological approach

In the previous sections, I have presented a historical survey of the per-

spective of art historians towards the left-right phenomenon. Next to this, I
made an introduction to the main contributions of neurologists to the possi-
ble relation of left-handedness with leftwards scripts and also about the
phenomenon of mirror writing. Now I will present a historical survey of
the positioning of neurologists towards the more concrete topic of reading
habits and aesthetic preferences, which links the two relevant fields for this
research: art history and neuroscience.
VISUAL LATERALITY 63

There is a large corpus of literature on the asymmetrical placing of the pre-

ference, in the West, for the center of gravity to the right of the center.
This literature, as we shall see shortly, contains a great deal of discussion
about why the basic spatial asymmetry occurs in addition to the now rather
discredited idea of a glance curve. There are some fundamental studies re-
lated to this topic whose conclusions I will introduce chronologically and
that are relevant for my own study, since they support my visual-laterality
hypothesis. From the middle of the 1970s onwards, this topic became a
main issue for scholars in the field of neurology and nowadays it remains
an important topic in the field. Much has been achieved and demonstrated,
but there are still several obscure points that deserve further study.
Research has demonstrated that there is a significant effect of reading
habits on aesthetic preference, with left-to-right readers showing a prefer-
ence for stimuli with a rightward directionality while right-to-left readers
preferred stimuli with a leftward directionality. These findings raise the
question of an interaction between cultural factors and cerebral dominance,
as we have already pointed out before. For the cerebral dominance part,
one pioneer in the field of lateral dominance and aesthetical preference, the
American neurologist Jerre Levy, supports the hypothesis that lateral spe-
cialization of the cerebral hemispheres affects preferences for one of two
mirror symmetric pictures. As stated in the discussion of that paper,

while preferred choices of one group of right-handers predict

choices of another group of right-handers, the predictive validity for
a group of left-handers is essentially zero. Slightly over 40% of si-
nistrals prefer mirror versions of pictures opposite to the choice of
the dextral. (Levy 1976: 436)

These observations are similar to those of neurologists Swartz & Hewitt

who found a very small, but significant, majority of right-handers preferred
the original versions of famous paintings as compared with their mirror
images, while left-handers did not.48 Later on, another article was pub-
lished on this topic by the neurologists Marily Freimuth and Seymour
Wapner that contributed to perceptual and aesthetic theory by demonstrat-
ing that two factors influence the evaluation of paintings: sequence of fig-
ures and exposure time (meaning here, how long the viewer is observing
the figure). It concluded that asymmetrical factors are predominantly
operative in perception and aesthetic judgments made after brief observa-
tions. These asymmetries influence evaluations only for paintings with
dominant directional properties measured by lateral organization. With
longer exposure time (and this is relevant for my study) other cognitive
factors (e.g. conceptual, symbolic analyses) become increasingly influen-
tial.49 So, cultural conventions became only a factor of importance after
longer exposure time. They found that pictures with implied motion from
64 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

left-to-right are preferred to those with implied motion from right-to-left.

Further in this line of research, the American neuropsychologist J. Graham
Beaumont, argued as a conclusion of an experimental observation that,

lateral asymmetry in preferred picture arrangements is not the result

of a counterbalancing of content against perceptual bias, but a con-
sequence of gaze being directed to informative content on the right,
leaving more of the secondary content within the left visual field
and associated with attentional bias or processes of the right hemi-
sphere. (Beamount 1985: 103)

He further concluded that,

it is therefore the operation of neuropsychological processes related

to the peripheral elements of the visual array, those outside central
vision, which best explain the association between aesthetic prefer-
ences and features of lateral neuropsychological dominance
(Beaumont 1985: 112).

In the same year, an article about the subjective balance in pictures was
published by the neurologists I.C. McManus, D. Edmodson and J. Rodger,
that showed that when pictures used for the experiment showed large dif-
ferences in balance point, subjects showed smaller differences, unrelated to
handedness or eye-dominance50, a conclusion which provides no support
for the position of Levy (introduced above). Further, the neurologists
Marie T. Banich, Wendy Heller and Jerre Levy, taking into consideration
Freimuth and Wapner’s study, suggested that the preference of slides with
apparent motion from right-to-left deserved comment. After pursuing their
experiment, they were able to conclude that: first, it appears that left-to-
right scanning habits induced by reading do not induce preference for
asymmetry of motion in their slides, because right-handers preferred slides
with right-to-left motion and because the orientation preference of left-han-
ders was unrelated to asymmetry of motion; second, that their findings dif-
fer from those of Freimuth and Wapner, who found that preferred slides
were judged to have relative motion from left-to-right.51 They point out,
however, that in Freimuth and Wapner’s study, the slides did not have a
significant asymmetry of content, implying with this that it may be that
right-to-left motion is only preferred where there is a significant asymmetry
of content. It has also been reported by Beaumont (unpublished data) that
subjects preferred pictures of horses when they were jumping towards the
center of the picture. If the horse was placed to the right of center it was
preferred when jumping to the left; conversely, if the horse was placed to
the left of center, it was preferred when jumping to the right.52
VISUAL LATERALITY 65

As we have already seen, observers often prefer orientation of a stimulus

over its mirror image and this preference, as stated by neurologists
S. Christman and K. Pinger, for left-to-right directionality may represent a
fairly deep and pervasive aspect of mental representations and processes.53
The neurologists Chatterjee, Maher and Heilman reported that when nor-
mal subjects are asked to draw stick figures depicting the thematic roles of
agent and patient, they exhibited a consistent bias to place the agent on the
left and the patient on the right, thus displaying a left-to-right pattern of
causality.54 Further, Christman and Pinger state that, in the same way, there
is evidence that scanning patterns in visual search proceed rightward from
fixation.55 Finally, saccadic latency is less for left-to-right movements than
for right-to-left.
Collectively, these findings are suggestive of a deep, underlying prefer-
ence for left-to-right directionality in both perceptual and motor processes.
Nevertheless, as stated by Christman and Pinger, an unresolved question
concerns the relation between the aforementioned directional biases and
the left-to-right scanning involved in reading. That is, do the aforemen-
tioned preferences for left-to-right directionality simply reflect the influ-
ence of learned preferences arising from left-to-right reading habits, or is
there some more fundamental directional bias that underlies all of these
phenomena? They finish their reflection stating that future research invol-
ving multiple tasks and/or subjects who read right-to-left language will be
necessary to address this issue.56 This is, indeed, extremely interesting for
my research. One of the fundamental studies done at the beginning of the
present decade is the one by neurologists Sylvie Chokron and Maria de
Agostini.57 The aim of that study was to determine the extent to which aes-
thetic preference, previously attributed to cerebral dominance, may be
determined by reading habits. In order to achieve that, they submitted left-
to-right (French) and right-to-left (Israeli) readers to a visual aesthetic pre-
ference task. Subjects were presented with pairs of object pictures: one
with a left-to-right directionality and the other with right-to-left directional-
ity. As they stated in their discussion, “the main finding of the present
experiment is an effect of reading habits on aesthetic preference, with sub-
jects preferring the pictures possessing the same directionality as their read-
ing habits” (Chokron & De Agostini 2000: 48). Therefore, reading habits
are able to influence visual preferences and even the way we mentally
represent the world. Only three years later, an article about this topic was
published by the neurologists Jacqueline Fagard and Riadh Dahmen.58
They compared the influences of reading and writing habits on the asym-
metry of space perception and the directional tendencies of French and
Tunisian right-handers, aged 5, 7 and, 9 years. By comparing two groups
of children who use the opposite direction for writing, before and after
being taught to read in school, they evaluated the impact of writing direc-
tion on these asymmetries. In their conclusion, they state that,
66 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

basic influences appear to be similar in young children with differ-

ing reading and writing habits, which becomes obvious after some
practice in writing, overrides these more basic influences. When the
two influences are compatible (as when left-right writing favours
the pre-existing leftward bias and the left-to-right hand bias), the
bias appears stronger and earlier. When the two types of influence
are opposed (with right-left writing), there is less and sometimes no
bias. The lack of a bias in the Tunisian children in two of the three
tasks might also reflect the influence of learning French. (Fargard &
Dahmen 2003: 50)

There are some classic studies59 on this topic of reading habits that are im-
portant to read. This topic remarkably has been addressed in the last dec-
ade by a group of neurologists from the American University of Beirut
(Lebanon). This group of researchers advocates the need to acknowledge
script as a variable when examining hemispheric asymmetries when em-
ploying non-linguistic stimuli, as its influence has been demonstrated by
their different experiments including right-to-left script users. The neurolo-
gists Robin L. Heath, Aida Rouhana and Dana Abi Ghanem, from the
American University of Beirut in Lebanon, have performed two research
experiments whose results were published in two different papers in
2005.60 In the first experiment they selected three groups of subjects: white
Americans, bidirectional readers and Arabic readers. They used the asym-
metric chimeric faces test (which I introduced in the previous section) and
they found that readers of right-to-left scripts showed a mixed or weak
rightward bias in judgments of facial affect which supports again the influ-
ence of habitual scanning direction to intersect with laterality.61 The second
experiment was done with the same three groups of subjects as in the first
one, plus one more group of illiterates. Their findings showed that biases
in aesthetic preference were influenced by script direction and pictorial di-
mensions. In a laterally balanced composition, participants preferred to be-
gin their scan with the object representing Interest and terminate with the
object representing Weight, the direction being determined by the script. In
an unbalanced composition, participants tended to fixate on content,
whether Interest or Weight, and move in a direction consistent with the
script.62 Nowadays, according to the results of my investigation, there are
at the moment two groups of scholars working on direction of script and
aesthetic preferences or perception: Dr J. Vaid at Texas A & M and her
colleagues are working with Urdu script (also right to left). She was doing
work with drawing the profiles of human heads. Steve Christman at the
University of Toledo is also researching aesthetics and reading direction.
In sum, all the previous studies constitute a solid theoretical basis that
supports the visual-laterality hypothesis. A large amount of research in the
field of neuropsychology has demonstrated that there is a significant effect
VISUAL LATERALITY 67

of reading habits on aesthetic preference, with left-to-right readers showing

a preference for stimuli with a rightward directionality while right-to-left
readers preferred stimuli with a leftward directionality.
As a conclusion to the research done for this chapter, I can state that the
direction of the script is directly related to the composition of works of art.
Therefore, the direction of writing is one of the cultural components that
constitute a photograph. There is a tendency in nineteenth-century Iranian
photographers to produce mirror-like images of those produced by their
Western colleagues. This tendency has been proven to be consistent in the
three groups of composition that I have analyzed throughout the chapter.
The state of the discourse in the field in neurology is, nowadays, still full
of unanswered questions and we will have to wait and see how it will de-
velop with time, to test if we can profit from future findings to be able to
explain the visual-laterality phenomenon. Different groups of neurologists
have concluded, after pursuing statistical experiments, that not only the di-
rection of writing but also the right hemisphere involvement in the leftward
direction of eye movements and the left visual fields are important and
play a role in mirror writing and, therefore, on the visual-laterality phe-
nomenon. Leading scholars in the field of neuroscience advocate the need
to acknowledge script as a variable when examining hemispheric asymme-
tries, as its influence has been demonstrated by their different experiments
including right-to-left script users. The last studies point to the fact that
there is an interaction between cultural factors (reading habits) and cerebral
dominance when considering the visual-laterality hypothesis. The fact that
those studies acknowledge the script as a variable in perceptual lateral
asymmetries gives solid theoretical support to my hypothesis from a neu-
roscientific approach.
In the following chapters I will extend the process of analysis of images
to find other cultural components involved in the process of producing a
photograph.

Notes

1 Taken from Fritsch 1964: 7. Silvio Ceccato (1914-1997) was an Italian philosopher and
linguist.
2 After McManus 2004: 242-43.
3 Handedness is an atribute of human beings defined by their unequal distribution of fine
motor skill between the left and right hands. An individual who is more dexterous with
the right hand is called right-handed, and one who is more skilled with the left is said to
be left-handed (8-15%).
4 Anisotropy is the property of being directionally dependent as opposed to isotropy, which
means homogeneity in all directions.
5 Gross and Bornstein 1978: 29-38.
6 Wölfflin 1941: 82-96.
7 Further reading of works by other aestheticians about the right-left problem in art: J.W.
Schlosser (1930), “Intorno alla lettura dei Quaddri”, Critica, XXVIII: 72; Faistauer, A.
68 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

(1926), “Links und Rechts in Bilde”, Amicis, Jahrbuch des Oesterr. Galerien; R. Keller,
R. (1942), “The Right-Left Problem in Art”, Ciba Symposia, Summit, N.J. III: 1139.
8 Arnheim 1965: 50.
9 Gaffron 1950: 315.
10 Keller 1942: 1142.
11 Gardner 2005: 36-37.
12 The Bakhtiari are a group of southwestern Iranians. A small percentage of Bakhtiari are
still nomadic pastoralists. They inhabit the provinces of Lorestan, Khuzestan, Chahar
Mahal and Bakhtiari and Isfahan.
13 Taken from Barjesteh 2008: 127.
14 Double exposure in the nineteenth century was especially related and used in spirit photo-
graphy, but there were photographers that were using it just to create funny tricky por-
traits or scenes, like the one shown here. A very interesting book about this topic is:
Henisch & Henisch (1994), The Photographic Experience 1839-1914: Images and
Attitudes. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press.
15 Nashat 2004: 76.
16 Harris et al. 2007: 64-86.
17 See: Van der Meer and Husby 2006: 263-276.
18 See: Salk 1961: 740-746. See also: Todd and Butterworth 1998: 229-233.
19 See: Harris et al. 2006; Ramón y Cajal 1899.
20 Taken from Christman and Pinger 1997: 159.
21 Arnheim 1969: 12.
22 Gutman 1982: 39.
23 Gutman 1982: 23.
24 Pérez González, C. (2012, online November 2011), “Lateral Organization in Nineteenth-
Century Studio Photographs is Influenced by the Direction of Writing: A Comparison of
Iranian and Spanish Photographs”, in Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and
Cognition. Psychology Press: DOI:10.1080/1357650X.2011.586701
25 Levy 1976: 431-445.
26 The art historians Christine Macel, curator at MNAM Centre Pompidou in Paris, the ar-
chitect Tammo Prinz) and neurologists (Dr Alexander Abbushi, Prof. Karl Einhäupl and
Prof. Detle Ganten from the Dept. of Neurosurgery of Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Prof.
Ernst Pöppel, director of the Institute of medical Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-
University Munich; Prof. Semir Zeki, professor of Neuroesthetics at University College
London. Website: http://www.association-of neuroesthetics.org/documents/content.php?
nav=lnk0200&use=con0200
27 Zijlmans and Van Damme 2008.
28 Onians, J. (2008), “Neuroarthistory: Making More Sense of Art”, in Zijlmans & van
Damme (eds.), World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches: 265-286.
29 Onians 2007.
30 Ramón y Cajal 1899. The labels have been added by Charles G. Gross and Marc H.
Bernstein for their article already mentioned above.
31 Zeki 1999: 16.
32 Zeki 1999: 15.
33 Taken from Zeki 1999: 16.
34 Schott and Schott 2004: 1850.
35 Skoyles 1992: 25-26.
36 Pollatsky et al. 1981: 174-180.
37 Skoyles 1992: 1.
38 Tashiro et al. 2005: 834. They point out that, in contrast to Hebrew script, Japanese script
(both Kanji and Kana) is traditionally written and read vertically, although the lines are
read from right to left. This does not mean Japanese languages are written in a leftward
VISUAL LATERALITY 69

direction. Japanese horizontal scripts are written from left to right, the same as alphabetic
languages.
39 Schott 2007: 8.
40 Skoyles 1988.
41 McManus and Humphrey 1973.
42 Hufschmidt 1980.
43 Gross and Bronstein 1978: 35.
44 Enantiomorphs is the mathematical term for two things which have contrary shapes. Also
the term incongruent counterparts (objects that are perfectly similar in shape except for
being mirror images of each other, such as left and right human hands) is widely used in
the scientific literature instead of enantiomorphs. Inmanuel Kant was the first great thinker
to point out the philosophical significance of such objects. He called them counterparts
because they are similar in nearly every way, incongruent because, despite their similarity,
one could never be put in the place of the other. Further reading: Van Cleve, J. and
Frederick, R.E. (1991), The Philosophy of Right and Left. Incongruent Counterparts and
the Nature of Space, Canada.
45 Gaffron 1950: 317.
46 Gross and Bronstein 1978: 35.
47 Zangemeister et al. 1995.
48 Swartz & Hewitt 1970: 991.
49 Freimuth & Wapner 1979, 70: 218.
50 McManus et al 1985, 76: 311.
51 Banich et al. 1989: 193.
52 Banich et al. 1989: 194.
53 Christman & Pinger 1997.
54 See: Chatterjee et al. 1995.
55 Christman & Pinger 1997: 174.
56 Christman & Pinger 1997: 174.
57 Chokron & De Agostini 2000.
58 Fagard & Dahmen 2003.
59 See: Dreman, S.B. (1974), “Directionality Trends as a Function of Handedness and of
Reading and Writing Habits”, in American Journal of Psychology, 87 (1): 247-254;
Bryden, M.P. (1966), “Left-Right Differences in Tachistoscopic Recognition: Directional
Scanning or Cerebral Dominance?”, in Perceptual and Motor Skills, 23: 1127-1134;
Ghent Braine, L. (1968), “Asymmetries of Pattern Perception Observed in Israelis”, in
Neuropsicologia, Vol. 6: 73-88; Blount, P., Colmes, J. & Rodger, H. (1975), “On the
Ability to Discriminate Original from Mirror-Image Reproductions of Works of Art”, in
Perception, Vol. 4: 385-389; Kugelmass, S. & Lieblich, A. (1979), “Impact of Learning
to Read on Directionality in Perception: a Further Cross-Cultural Analysis”, in Human
Development 22: 406-415;
60 Heath 2005 A, and Heath 2005 B.
61 It must be noted that the same conclusions were already achieved with an experiment
done 25 years ago by the neurologists Joytsna Vaid and Maharaj Singh. Perceptions of
happy facial affect from asymmetric composite faces presented in free vision were com-
pared in four groups: left-to-right readers (Hindi), right-to-left readers (Arabic and Urdu),
left-to-right and right-to-left readers (Hindi/Urdu) and illiterates (Hindi/Urdu). The left-
ward bias was present in a significant larger proportion of Hindi than Urdu or Arabic
readers. These results are taken to reflect an interaction between a cerebral laterality effect
and a directional scanning effect in facial affect judgement. See: Vaid, J. & Singh, M.
(1989), “Asymmetries in the Perception of Facial Affect: Is There an Influence of
Reading Habits?”, in Neuropsychologia, Vol. 27, No. 10: 1277-1287.
62 Heath 2005 B: 399.
2 THE WRITTEN IMAGE: TEXT AND
PHOTOGRAPHY

For Mina Zandi Siegel and Evan Siegel

Texts were invented in the second millennium BC in order to take

the magic out of images, even if their inventors may not have been
aware of this; the photograph, the first technical image, was
invented in the nineteenth century in order to put texts back under a
magic spell, even if its inventors may not have been aware of this.
The invention of the photograph is a historical event as equally
decisive as the invention of writing. With writing, history in the
narrower sense begins as a struggle against idolatry. With
photography, “post-history” begins a struggle against textolatry.
Vilém Flusser (Flusser 2000: 19)

The usage of text/calligraphy in the Persian painting tradition seems to

have had some impact on nineteenth-century Iranian photography.
However, the relation of this particular phenomenon to photography is
somehow more ambiguous than the laterality factor. It needs to be explored
as to what end the photographer has used the inscription around the studio
photographs, if they are used just as a decorative purpose, or just as plain
text to provide some information (where the text is devoid of any stylistic
components) or the text bears some symbolic, or hidden hints, or a combi-
nation of any of the above. For this purpose a careful reading of the text,
its meaning as well as its style analysis, its symbolic significance, or its lit-
erary references, both within the pictorial and the photographic space, will
be emphasized in this chapter. Towards this end, I will categorize the
photographs selected for this chapter according to three different para-
meters: by the kind of script used to write the inscriptions; by the content
or meaning of the text; and by the way in which the text has been imple-
mented in the photographic space.

2.1 Persian calligraphy and type of scripts

The Persian word for calligraphy is khosh-nevisi, literally “beautiful writ-

ing”. Calligraphy, out of all the arts, could be considered one of the most
72 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

typical expressions of the Islamic spirit. The Koran itself has stressed the
importance of writing several times. For example, in the earliest Sura1, 96/
3-4, God is described as the Almighty who “taught man with the Pen” and
in Sura 68 the oath begins: “Nun! And by the Pen….”. The idea of writing,
as stated by the scholar in Islamic culture Annemarie Schimmel, “is found
everywhere in the Holy Book: the Koran is pre-eternally written on a well-
preserved tablet” (Sura 85/21-22) (Schimmel 1970: 1). Writing is, thus,
considered to be of divine origin and the letters are considered the only
worthy carriers of holy scriptures and divine revelation. As stated by
Schimmel, “every human fate has been written since pre-eternity, and its
unchangeability is expressed in the Prophetic tradition qad jaffa’l-qalam
‘The Pen has already dried up’” (Schimmel 1970: 1). As Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations professor Franz Rosenthal points out:
“Sacredness became a characteristic element in writing” (Rosenthal 1961:
17). The sixteenth-century Iranian artist and critic Qādi Ahmad suggests
the remarkable importance that calligraphy held within the Muslim world:

Through the qalam (pen) existence receives God’s orders, from

Him the candle of the qalam receives its light. The qalam is a cy-
press in the garden of knowledge, the shadow of its order is spread
over dust (Ahmad 1959).

Most studies of Islamic calligraphy have concentrated on historical ques-

tions. The remarkable work of Nabia Abbot, Annemarie Schimmel, Martin
Lings, Yasin Safadi and Sheila Blair among others, has created an impor-
tant body of information concerning certain aspects of this phenomenon.2
Islamic Inscriptions by Blair is an important book as referent for the pre-
sent chapter since it is a rigorous study of the content and function of in-
scriptions found on monumental arquitecture to all kinds of portable
objects.
Focusing on the particular case of Iran, all different kinds of Persian art
are characterized by abstraction, sensuous tendencies, harmony and, more
than anything else, by its decorative tendency. In Persian calligraphy this is
especially true. In the words of the Iranian scholar Ehsan Yarshater,

the obscuring of the main function of an art through indulgence in

secondary aspects of it, finds a further example in the development
of Persian calligraphy. In its latest stages, the artist is so much en-
thralled by his elaboration of curves, circles, and flowing lines, that
communication of the written word becomes almost an alien
thought to him. It is a thrilling experience to look at late cursive
Persian calligraphy, with its extraordinary grace and its intricate ar-
tistry, but to try to read it is quite a different matter. One might just
as well try to solve a recondite riddle (Yarshater 1962: 69).
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 73

Calligraphy was practiced not only by professional calligraphers, but also

by princes and nobles. Calligraphers were a fundamental requirement for
any self-respecting court, since they instructed the Shah’s children in the
principles of the art and, at the same time, produced manuscripts for the
royal library.
Schimmel explains that, from the very beginning, two different types of
writing seem to have existed side by side,

The normal type for correspondence, as found in papyri, was cur-

sive and a forerunner to the later so-called Naskh-style: round and
easy to write. For copying the Holy Book, however, another type is
used, called Kufi, though there should be a distinction between
Meccan, Medinan and Kufic proper (Schimmel 1970: 5).

The Islamic calligraphy scholar Nabia Abbott prefers to speak here of

“Koranic scripts” in contrast to the normal hand (Abbott 1941: 69).
In this chapter, I am concerned with the cursive scripts, mostly used in
Persian miniature painting and also in photography, as we shall see later
on. My aim is to analyze the use of text in the photograph as an ornamen-
tal and symbolic element and to explore how this use is related to calligra-
phy, miniature and Qajar painting. I will introduce some examples of
Persian miniature painting and Qajar portraiture that will aid the under-
standing of some nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photographs. Two of
the topics that I am more concerned with are calligraphic inscriptions with-
in the photographic space and the kinds of cursive scripts used in the
photograph. In order to achieve this, a brief introduction to the different
types of script styles is required.
The Islamic art historian Yasin Hamid Safadi indicates that

the “six styles” known in Arabic as al-Aqlam al-Sittah, and in

Persian and Turkish as Shis Qalam, are cursive scripts which were
first raised to the status of major scripts when they were subjected to
strict calligraphic rules by Ibn Muqlah (d. 940) (Safadi 1978: 52).

Persian calligraphers excelled in all styles of writing. The names of these

classical cursive scripts are Thuluth, Naskhi, Muhaqqaq, Rayhani, Tawqi
and Riqa. Four more scripts, Ghubar, Tumar, Tal’iq and Nastal’iq were la-
ter added to Ibn Muqlah’s repertoire. Taliq and Nastal’iq are known as the
hanging scripts. As stated by the art historian in Islamic art Sheila Blair, of
all scripts, by far the most important in this period was Nastal’iq. She
further writes,
74 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

that Habiballah Faza’ili, the modern expert on Persian calligraphy,

has estimated that 75 percent of everything written in Persian from
the mid-fifteenth century was done in this script (Blair 2006: 418).

We will see shortly that in Persian miniature painting and Qajar portraiture,
Thuluth and Nastal’iq scripts are the most widely used. In some nine-
teenth-century Iranian photographs, we can see the use of Naskh script as
well. Therefore, I will just focus on these three scripts and will introduce
them briefly, as Safadi has defined them.
Thuluth was first formulated in the seventh-century during the Umayyad
caliphate, but did not develop fully until the late ninth-century. “The name
means ‘a third’ – whether because of the proportion of straight lines and
curves, or because the script was a third of the size of another popular con-
temporary script, the Tumar, is not known” (Safadi 1978: 52). Thuluth is
still considered the most important of all the ornamental scripts. The first
image (fig. 47) is a good example of Thuluth, being a detail in the hand of
the most famous Ottoman calligraphers, Shaykh Hamdullah, who was ac-
tive in Istanbul in the early sixteenth century. As stated by Safadi,

Naskhi was one of the earliest cursive scripts to evolve, but it

gained popularity only after it had been redesigned by Ibn Muqlah
in the tenth century. It was transformed by Ibn al-Bawwab and
others into an elegant script worthy of the Koran, and ever since,
more Korans have been written in Naskhi than in any other script. It
appealed particularly to the ordinary man because it was relatively
easy to read and write. It is nearly always written with short hori-
zontal stems, and with almost equal vertical depth above and below
the medial line. The curves are full and deep, the uprights straight
and vertical, the words generally well spaced (Safadi 1978: 62).

The second image (fig. 48) is an example of Naskhi Koran copied also by
the Ottoman calligrapher Shaykh Hamdullah al-Amasini in the early six-
teenth century.
During the sixteenth-century in Persia, an important calligraphic devel-
opment took place with the formulation of the Ta’liq (hanging) script from
Riqa’ and Tawqi’. The third image (fig. 49) is a composite page of Persian
text in large ornamental Tal’iq and small Nastal’iq by Shah Mahmud al-
Nishaburi in the early sixteenth century. From Ta’liq, an even lighter and
more elegant form evolved, known as Nasta’liq. The next image (fig. 50)
presents a page in Nasta’liq written by Mohammad Darwish al-
Samarqandi in Kashmir in 1624. As explained by Safadi, “derived from
both Ta’liq and Nasta’liq was Shekaste (broken form), which is character-
ized by an exaggerated density in the super structured letters” (Safadi
1978: 84). The next image presents a page in densely structured Shekaste
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 75

(fig. 51) written by Nawab Murid Khān in India, probably during the se-
venteenth century.
Persian painting and calligraphy (regardless of the type of script) are
mixed together perfectly, the calligraphic inscriptions always being placed
in the best possible places and with a harmonic understanding of space and
design. This also would be a very important characteristic of text and
photography, as we shall see with clear examples. Calligraphy flows
through the painting and finds its proper place to become a perfectly har-
monious work of art. This constitutes something like a poetic marriage of
different elements (imagery and calligraphy), in both visual art mediums:
photography and painting. The abstract calligraphic inscription not only
does not disturb the perception of the final image, it also adds an extremely
aesthetic dimension to it. Inscriptions were added traditionally in all kind
of objects in Persia, as stated by Blair,

in the Islamic lands the earlier tradition of monumental writing not

only continued but expanded. Inscriptions occur on objects of all
media and materials, from the humblest, such as oil lamps and other
unglazed ceramics, to the finest and most expensive, including rock
crystals and jades. Inscriptions were added even in media where the
technical limitations of the material make it extremely difficult to
incorporate a running text, like silk textiles…. The demand for in-
scribed textiles was so great, however, that silk weavers in the
Islamic countries soon overcame the confines of the technique, and
by the tenth century Persian weavers had figured out how to incor-
porate long bands of inscriptions on their elaborated patterned silks
woven on draw looms (Blair 1998: 4).

With this long and well-rooted tradition of placing inscriptions in every

possible object, regardless of size or function, it is not striking that nine-
teenth-century Iranian photographers also used inscriptions within the
photographic space.

2.2 Text and nineteenth-century Iranian portrait studio

photography: Type of script versus content and
meaning of the inscription

The main research focus of this section is whether the use, function and
meaning of text or calligraphic inscriptions in nineteenth-century Iranian
photography have been inherited from the Persian painting tradition. To es-
tablish parallels and differences is the aim of this chapter. Other questions
that I pose in this section are whether the use of text in the photographic
space is something unique, and therefore, defining of nineteenth-century
76 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Iranian photography or if it is to be found in nineteenth-century photogra-

phy in other countries.
It is fundamental to remark here that when analyzing the text that is pre-
sent in nineteenth-century Iranian photography, we find several degrees of
elaboration in those inscriptions to the point that we have to be very cau-
tious on how we use the words calligraphy or text, since in some cases the
inscription is just a plain text that cannot be named calligraphy due to the
lack of elaboration and the lack of decorative purpose, even if it has been
written neatly or beautifully. As pointed out by Just Jan Witkam, photogra-
phy was mainly an elite pastime. It is in that context that we must appreci-
ate and judge the neat or beautiful texts on the photographs. In some cases,
there is no practical purpose and therefore it is easier to see this as calligra-
phy.3 Nevertheless, what is common to all of them, and this is especially
relevant for my research, is that they are implemented in the photographic
space in a similar way as they were implemented in the Persian miniatures
and, even more clearly, as in the Qajar portrait paintings. There are (at
least) three possible ways of classifying the photographs selected for this
chapter: by the type of script; by the content and meaning of the inscrip-
tion; and by the way in which the inscription has been implemented on the
photographic space (layout). Basically, I am trying to find an answer to
three questions: how, what and where the inscriptions were written. For the
first classification, I have defined three groups: Nasta’liq, Thuluth and
Naskh. For the second classification I have defined two groups: factual
information and poetic or symbolic meaning. The third classification in-
cludes two groups: framed/organized and freely written on the photo-
graphic space. The first and second classifications can also be identified
and related to either decorative purpose (which includes both calligraphy-
like and symbolic or poetic meaning) or practical purpose (which includes
both text and factual information). For the present book, I will classify the
photographs according to the type of script versus meaning of the inscrip-
tions, and I will reflect about the spatial implementation of the inscriptions
within the photographic space individually with each image.

Nasta’liq and poetry

The first group that I have established taking into consideration the type of
the script, Nasta’liq, is formed by images like the portrait of Crown Prince
Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā (fig. 52), and we can see a particular use of text in
the photographic space. There is an inscription in Nasta’liq script that is
placed on four cartouches on each corner of the image. It is a piece of po-
etry about the young man depicted in this portrait:
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 77

Remarkably, the inscription is a poem about the sitter that gives us factual
information about him at the same time. The poem has been written for
this photograph and this is an interesting element that we can find in other
photographs selected for this chapter: a poem is written about the personal-
ity and/or occupation of the sitter and it is placed on the photographic sur-
face. The inscription reads “The picture put within the mould/frame of the
soul’s state, it is the portrait of the prince, the protector of the world.” This
inscription was surely added some years later, as in the poem the sitter is
mentioned as Shah, whereas in the photograph he was still a prince. This
portrait presents the sitter in the typical pose used by court photographers,
and we can find many examples like this one when going through the al-
bums of Nāser al-Din Shah and his family held at Palace Golestān Library.
The pose has been inherited from the Qajar portrait paintings of Fath Ali
Shah and Nāser al-Din Shah, as I will show in the chapter of this book de-
voted to the pose in nineteenth-century Iranian portrait studio photography.
The way in which the inscription has been implemented within the
photographic space, recalls the way in which inscriptions were implemen-
ted often in the pictorial space in Persian miniature painting, as it happens
in Sultān-Hoseyn Mirzā Bayqarā, Herat, ca. 1500 (fig. 53, see full color
section), which presents an unfinished drawing with a background of solid
color, probably added when it was mounted in the Bahrām Mirzā Album.4
The inscriptions in Nasta’liq script are placed in “boxes” at each side of
the painting and identify the subject as Sultān-Hoseyn (left top cartouche)
as well as the artist – Ustād Behzād (top right cartouche). In the bottom
center cartouche, we can read in Naskh script written with golden color
and placed very much hidden inside a very intricate eslāmi structure,5
“Show me the answer to my letter”. These three inscriptions (artist, sitter
and text) read, in Persian:

In Seated figure holding a cup, mid-seventeenth century (fig. 54, see full
color section), we can read an inscription in Nasta’liq script, a beautiful
78 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

piece of poetry by one of the great masters of Persian poetry, Omar

Khayyām (1048-1122).6 The poem is a very popular one among Iranians:

The translation into English reads: “Do you know why the rooster sings a
dirge at dawn?”. In the frame on the miniature and divided into twelve car-
touches, we can read another poem whose author I have not managed to
identify:

The next photograph (fig. 55) depicts the poet Habib Qā’āni. The inscrip-
tion, in Nasta’liq script, in the upper left corner, is one of his poems of
autobiographical content:

The text speaks about the weaknesses, lack of energy and fears of the poet
and how they are taken in care by God. Again, the cushion behind the sit-
ter’s back, the water pipe, the traditional kneeling pose and the inscription
result in an image that resembles fully that of miniature studios, such as
Rezā-Abbāsi painting a picture of a European man, signed by Mo’in
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 79

Mosavvar (fig. 56, see full color section), is a well-known work by the
leading exponent of the “Isfahan style”. Mu’in’s master, the celebrated ar-
tist Rezā Abbāsi is shown working with deep concentration. The inscrip-
tion has been written in Shekaste script, and it is quite difficult to read and
decipher. This artwork is annotated with long and very detailed inscriptions
that tell us when, why, and under what circumstances the drawing was
made.
In Shiraz there was a family of photographers that was very active in the
last part of nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth centuries. The first
photographer of this family was Mirzā Hasan (1853-1915), who was active
from around 1870. An interesting photograph taken by this photographer
presents a group of poets from Shiraz (fig. 57) in 1894. Under and above
each of them, we can read their names: four are kneeling in the traditional
pose and eight are sitting on chairs. This photograph is also arranged in
miniature style with inscriptions placed in cartouches above and under the
image. In plain and clear Nasta’liq script we can read a poem:
80 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

The Iranian poet Abd al-Āsi Ali Naqi al-Shirāzi is the author of this poem,
whose content is a poetic exhaltation of the good personal qualities of
each one of the poets depicted in the photograph. The Iranian photo histor-
ian and collector Mansour Sane states in his book Photography in Shiraz
that “a photographer without any knowledge of poetry would be incom-
plete just in the same way a poet ignorant of images would be” (Sane
1991: 2). Iran is a land of poets and visual artists, and often both literary
and artistic traditions are so intermingled that it is impossible to under-
stand them properly as independent artistic expressions. Therefore, the
aforementioned statement makes sense in this context, but it does not in a
Western context. Poetry is deeply rooted in the Iranian culture’s
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 81

subconscious and impregnates with its metaphoric language all the visual
arts. As Blair explains,

Persian verses became standard decoration on many other types of

art made in Iran from the twelfth century onwards (…). Some
verses were taken from well-known poets, others were composed
for the occasion (Blair 1998: 98).

This agrees fully with the conclusion that I have reached after analyzing
the text on several photographs. Persian verses were also used in textiles
and even in carpets, like the Ardabil carpets, one hosted at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London and the other hosted at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art.7 Blair presents an interesting example of a silk dated to
the twelfth century in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that has a Persian
quatrain. “Composed for the occasion, the verse is written in the first per-
son as though the textile were speaking.” She states further that,

Persian poetry became increasingly popular on objects from the fif-

teenth century onwards. The Persian verses were drawn from a wide
repertory of classical poets, such as Daqiqi, Firdawsi, Sa’adi and
Hafiz. The text also refers to the objects on which they are in-
scribed. (Blair 1998: 98)

In this image, a poem has been especially written about the persons de-
picted on the photograph and it is, therefore, also a good example to illus-
trate Blair’s statement introduced above. The Iranian writer Mina Zandi
Siegel has proposed a rendition of the poem for me and it reads:

Praise the Lord of this land, a byword for goodness,

Wholly graceful and good-natured, unlike myself.
From the far South to the extreme North,
All has been under His Majesty’s rule, by the grace of the Highest.

No artist’s brush could create such an image,

A row of servants have humbled themselves near his throne.
One is Nessar,8 with the wisdom of his poetry.
The other, His Honor Asoudeh,9 the most learned and lucid,

The Four Mothers and Seven Fathers10 will not bring about such
….. again
But for me, all luminous of heart and profound of thought.
Sacrificing one’s life being the most virtuous action,
So all the learned rubbed their imploring faces on his feet.
82 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

If you, oh viewer of this group, would know

Those ten and twelve wise and learned,
One is the discerning, wise, His Excellency Ghodsi,
The other am I, who is called Forsat.

Knowledge of all the titles of this great...

The fame of his grandeur exceeds all limit,...
But yet in his court is less than...

One is Vahid-Zaman, philosopher and scholar.

And if you want to know the names of the other four,
One is Shifteh,11 his heart seduced, radiant as the sun,.....

The other, true Sadeq, with a good past, beyond compare,

Whose manner and education I shall tell you at length.
May he hold the loftiest place in Mighty and Glorious Heaven.

Another is Nava, who crowns the groups of the cultured,

The prime victor in this field.
Another is Fassihi,12 that poet of eloquent tongue,

Who speaks such verses that gems emerge from his speech.
He vanquishes every evil-doing foe,
For jeweled speech is one of his meritorious qualities.

Another one is Sho’a,13 whose lofty nature is brilliant,

Another Hasan,14 the elegant calligrapher,
With matching nature peerless in time.

Like the blazing sun...

No one is their peer,...
History stands a witness...

Composed by Abd al-Āsi Ali Naqi al-Shirāzi, in the Great God’s month of
Ramadan, on the blessed date of 1315.
Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri took the next photograph as well (fig. 58), as
we can read in the inscription, which is in Naskh script under the feet of
the person depicted. The rest of the photograph is framed by one inscrip-
tion in Nasta’liq script just as they are in miniatures. This is especially in-
teresting since the inscriptions have been placed in clouds, exactly like in
the illuminations. In the words of the Islamic art historian Norah Titley,

the sumptuous and meticulous art of illumination of manuscript title

pages, headings, verse division, dedications, borders and book
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 83

covers, had its origin, in the simple decoration of vowel marks and
ornamentation of the circles separating the verses of Korans written
in the seventh and eighth centuries by Arab calligraphers. By the
fourteenth century, ornate palmettes and sunbursts decorated the
borders of Korans and the arabesque, which developed from an ori-
gin as simple as that of the border decorations had become indivisi-
ble from Islamic decoration. (Titley 1983: 229)

The Persian illuminators with their strong sense of pattern and color and
their creativity in design brought the art of illumination to a peak. As in
miniature painting, every period and every atelier had its distinctive perso-
nal style of manuscript illumination. The designs of the illuminator were
not confined to the text pages but were also incorporated in details within
miniatures, on textiles, tents, architecture, carpets and in photographs, as
we have just seen in the previous photograph. Lotus petal and flower de-
sign (fig. 59) from a page in Ferdawsi’s Shāh-nāme is a beautiful example
of illumination in the Persian Inju style of Shiraz and is dated mid-four-
teenth century, which resembles fully those used in photography as well.
The next example is a whirling arabesque design and illuminated page dec-
oration (fig. 60) from Gharā’eb al-seghar by Navā’i made around 1520-30.
Coming back to our image, this is a photograph of a painting and it is
hosted at the Golestān Palace Library, where there is one album (number
461) with 28 photographs taken by Abd al- Qāsem ebn al-Nuri, which in-
cludes this image. The text in Persian reads (first the inscription on the
right side of the image, second on the top of the image, third on the left
side and finally the inscription on the bottom):
84 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

On the left, upper and right part of this frame, we can read a poem about
the sitter, Amir Kabir (d. 1852), the prime minister of Nāser al-Din Shah.
In the lower part of this frame, the photographer gives some biographical
information about Amir Kabir, with his whole title, and indicates that the
photograph was taken when he was 45 years old.
We can notice a parallel between the way of identifying the person de-
picted and the author in Iranian paintings and photographs. Who wrote the
calligraphic inscriptions on the photographs? It could have been a calligra-
pher or illuminator, or maybe the photographer himself or even the sitter.
Tahmasbpour argued (in the course of e-mail exchange in September 2008)
that, often the inscriptions on the photograph was written by a calligrapher
or illuminator. This is, again, an interesting parallel between Persian minia-
ture paintings and photographs, since in the pictorial works the calligraphic
inscriptions were also implemented by calligraphers or illuminators.
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 85

Nevertheless, this topic deserves further research and it is actually one of

the topics that I am researching currently.
Another photograph interesting for this study, which bears a poem by a
famous Persian poet, is a portrait of the Iranian photographer Mirzā
Mohammad-Rahim Akkāsbāshi (fig. 61), taken by the Iranian photogra-
pher Amir Seyyed Mohammad Rezā Khān al-Hoseyni. This image is inter-
esting because we can find two different ways of implementing inscriptions
within the photographic space: the first one is the traditional Persian way
of using text/calligraphy within the pictorial space, the cursive flowing
freely and harmoniously on the photographic space (post-photographic
phase) and the second one using one piece of paper to frame the text (no-
tice the Kodak piece of paper where the name of the photographer who
took this photograph is written: Amir Seyyed Mohammad Rezā Khān al-
Hoseyni), in the photographic space (pre-photographic phase). On the left
side of the photograph just above the sitter’s elbow we can read a poem by
Sa’di but that has been signed by the sitter himself. This inscription was
identified for me as one of Sa’di’s poems by the Islamic Art Historian
Markus Ritter in the course of an interview at Zürich University
(November 2011), and the poem reads:

The intention is that an image of us remains/because I do not see

perpetuity in existence/ perhaps a man of heart would some day
pray for my sake.

As stated by Ritter, “these are the two last verses of the three-rhymed
poem (qit’e) by Sa’di, written in the introduction of his Gulistan” (finished
656/1258), inscriptions that he has studied in-depth in his research of
Sa’di’s verses in Safavid and earlier Islamic arquitecture.15
Remarkably, the signature has been introduced, as in other photographs,
by the word ‘amal and this agrees with Blair’s statement about the general-
ized use of this word to introduce signatures on objects. She states that,

signatures on objects are typically introduced by the word ‘amal

(“work of”). The verb sana’a was used for higher-status or more
meticulous work. Artisans who signed their names with ‘amal on
86 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

metal bowls and other objects, for example, used sana’a on astro-
labes and other scientific instruments. (Blair 1998: 101)

The image has been mastered both in composition and atmosphere. The
photograph is also remarkable for the pose/camera and clothes. The clothes
are a mixture of Persian traditional clothes that present an elegant design of
vest, shirt and belt that contrast with the Western-style coat. The composi-
tion is mastered through a triangle formed by the camera (looking left-
wards), the chair (looking rightwards) and the head of the sitter. The elegant
pose of the photographer together with his interesting face and appearance,
complete a magnetic image that has been prepared with great detail and
care.

Thuluth: Titles of the sitters versus signatures of court photographers

Most of the signatures of Iranian court photographers (and of Iranian
photographers working at Dār al-Fonun) were written normally in Thuluth
script. How did the court painters sign their works? How did court photo-
graphers sign theirs? Before I introduce in detail this topic, it is important
to know when and how Iranian artists started signing their works. As the
Islamic art historian and former curatorial assistant in the Islamic
Department of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Eleonor Sims
states,

until about the end of the fifteenth century, Iranian figural painting
in any medium, at any period, is virtually always anonymous;
authentically signed paintings are very rare. In the late fifteenth cen-
tury a change is noticeable: some painters begin to sign their pic-
tures, just as scribes had done for some centuries in the Muslim
world. When the image was intended to represent a particular per-
son, he (or she) may have even been identified by a written inscrip-
tion. In other words, starting late in the fifteenth century, paintings
begin to be qualified, modulated, explained and – most significantly
– specified by words: a fact that represents a profound change in
certain norms with which literary Iranian society viewed itself.
(Sims 2002: 58)

She further states that,

a better contemporary match between words and images occurs in

another later Timurid phenomenon, the “portrait” that truly attempts
to render some aspect of the physical reality of the person por-
trayed. Just as artists’ signatures begin to become more frequent on
paintings towards the end of the fifteenth century, painted portraits
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 87

of important contemporary figures also begin to appear. (Sims

2002: 59)

So the tradition of signing works of art was already well established when
court painters were active during the Qajar Era. In these painted portraits,
next to the inscription revealing the identity of the artist, other inscriptions
were also to be found.
A challenging example of the use of the Thuluth and Nasta’liq scripts in
Qajar painting is found in the painting of Prince Mohammad Ali Mirzā by
Jafar (fig. 62, see full color section). The Thuluth script is used in the
upper right-hand corner in two cartouches: Navvab Muhammad Ali Mirzā
(Shah) Qajar, fi shahr-e Rajab al-murajjab, Sanah 1236. The Nasta’liq
script is seen under the throne: Raqam-i Jafar, chakir-i Dawlat. The upper
inscription reveals the name of the sitter as Fath Ali Shah’s eldest son,
Mohammad Ali Mirzā, better known as Dawlatshāh, whereas the lower
one informs us of the name of the artist. In this painting it is especially in-
teresting to see in which way the calligraphic inscriptions identifying both
sitter and painter have been placed and how. The symbol of the Lion and
the Sun belonged to the regal attire and the imperial image of the Persian
court in the Qajar Era. In this painting, both symbols have been integrated
in quite an interesting way: the throne has lion-shaped arms and the Sun
symbol (Khorshid Khānom in Persian) has been placed in the upper right
corner above the cartouche where the name of the sitter is written. The
paraphernalia in the way the identity of the sitter is revealed contrasts with
the sober way in which the identity of the painter is revealed through a
plain calligraphic inscription on the floor, right under the sitter’s throne, as
if it were his carpet!
All Qajar portraits selected here have in common that the calligraphic in-
scriptions give us the same kind of information: person depicted and
author. The inscriptions in fig. 63 (see full color section) are in Nasta’liq
script on the right-hand corner (“Fath Ali Shah al-Sultān-e Qajar, 1234)
and on the Sun throne reads: “Is this the throne of the world-possessing
Fath Ali Shah/ Or the heavenly thrown of the Lord of the Throne/This ele-
phant of a king, golden-crowned/In whose justice the world is in need.”16
In the stairs to the throne is written these are the stairs to the golden crown
king/the king whose justice the world deserves. Portrait of Fath Ali Shah
Seated, signed by Mehr Ali, 1813-14 (fig. 64, see full color section), pre-
sents inscriptions in two different scripts. In Thuluth script, to the right of
the crown in a cartouche (“al-Sultan Fath `Ali Shah Qajar”) and in
Nasta’liq script below in a cartouche, the text reads: “This is the likeness
of the King of kings, who is exalted to the Heavens/ Fath `Ali Shah is the
ocean of the world”. And also in Nasta’liq script in the lower left corner
(“Raqam-e kamtarin gholām Mehr Ali sanah 1229”, i.e. “the work of the
humble slave Mehr Ali in the year 1229).17 In a well-known portrait of
88 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Fath Ali Shah, Fath Ali Shah in Armor, signed by Mehr Ali, 1814-15, we
can see in the upper right corner, in Nasta’liq script (“Sultan Fath Ali Shah
Qajar”) and in the lower left we can read: “the work of the merest slave
Mihr `Ali in the year 1229”.18 Again, this way of placing the inscription
identifying sitter and painter, and the kind of script used for that, seems to
be very consistent. There are other well known examples that the reader
can find printed in different books devoted to the topic of Qajar painting.19
All the paintings analyzed here have in common that the name and the ti-
tles of the person depicted are in the upper position and the name of the ar-
tist in a lower place. It is striking that consistently among the paintings
analyzed for this section, the inscription that reveals the identity of the sit-
ter has been placed on the top right corner (quite close to the sitter’s head)
and the inscription that reveals the identity of the painter, his signature, has
been placed exactly on the opposite side of the diagonal, meaning on the
bottom left, in the furthest possible place to the first inscription. In some
cases it is so hidden that it is very difficult to locate: under the chair where
the poser is sitting, next to the edge of the carpet. Further, the majority of
the Qajar portraits analyzed for this chapter use the Thuluth script for the
name of the person depicted and the Nasta’liq script for the name of the ar-
tist. Since Thuluth is considered the most important of all ornamental
scripts, the fact that the painter uses this script to identify the sitter may
have the intention to show the social status of the person depicted. Also,
the way in which the painter arranges this kind of calligraphic ornament
and information in the pictorial space is very interesting and seems to fol-
low some kind of aesthetic and/or symbolic rules. The name of the person
depicted, in this case always Shahs, princes and noblemen of lesser rank,
is placed in the upper part of the painting, whereas the name of the painter
is placed in the lower corners of the painting. This also seems to follow
Qajar court’s rules of social status and hierarchy. So both the type of script
and where it is placed seems to be directly linked to the hierarchical rules
of Qajar society.
My hypothesis regarding the inconspicuous places where the signatures
are normally placed in Qajar paintings is supported by Blair’s research on
signatures in all kinds of objects. She notes that “in bowls, for example,
they are often found on the plain outside or under the foot. On a box, they
can come between the straps or under the clasp” (Blair 1998: 100). She
significantly states further that,

the inconspicuous location was deliberately chosen to show the hu-

mility of the artist, particularly in contrast to the lofty patron or reci-
pient, whose name is usually inscribed earlier or in a more promi-
nent place and often written in a different script. (Blair 1998: 100)
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 89

This is what I have concluded in the previous paragraph after analyzing an

important number of Qajar paintings. Blair continues that,

tiles show the same juxtaposition, and the artist is typically identi-
fied as “a low slave” in contrast to his lordly patron. This identifica-
tion should be taken metaphorically: these workers were not neces-
sarily slaves and were often quite well known individuals who
worked in high-status professions. (Blair 1998: 101)

What happened in court photography? Did court photographers sign their

works in a similar way to the court painters? Did they use the same formu-
la of humility and self-deprecation?
The main production of photographic activity in the first decades was
achieved within the walls of the Royal Photography Atelier (Akkāskhāne)
and the atelier at Dār al-Fonun (the first studios outside of court appeared
many decades later, at the very end of the nineteenth century). In the com-
parative chronology printed on the introduction to the history of Iranian
photography of this book, we can locate the main court photographers and
photographers at Dār al-Fonun. Some photographers working at the royal
court were given the title “Akkāsbāshi” (Court Photographer), a parallel
title to the one that it was given to their predecesors, “Naqqāshbāshi”
(Court Painter).
The first studio photograph considered here (fig. 65), a portrait of
Manuchehr Hasan Ali Khān Garusi (Amir Nezām) bears a signature writ-
ten in Naskh script with elements of Thuluth. In this case, the inscription
informs us that the photographer is Manuchehr Khān Akkāsbashi. This
court photographer was active in the last part of the reign of Mozaffar al-
Din Mirzā in Tabriz (from 1882 onwards), and his photographs are signed
with the formula Khān Ezzat Manuchehr (servant Manuchehr, which re-
minds us of the way the court painters signed their works previously). The
second photograph (fig. 66) by the same photographer and also dated late
1880s, depicts Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā in Tabriz. Both photographs bear al-
most the same intricate and elaborated signature: in the upper part we can
read Wali-‘ahd (i.e. crown prince) under the Qajar emblem of the Lion and
the Sun; in the middle, we read akskhāne-ye mobārake-ye hazrat-e vālā
ruhenā-fadā (to name the royal photo studio from Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā
in Tabriz); and in the bottom part we read Khān Ezzat Manuchehr. The
pioneer of Iranian photo history, Yahyā Zokā, explains that in the Golestān
Palace Library there are 83 photographs in two albums (Nos. 434 and 401)
with photographs of the time of Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā in Tabriz. Further,
and this is relevant for this research, in the last photographs from these al-
bums, as Zokā explains, the word amal is used to introduce the name of
the photographer, which is important since it agrees with research done by
90 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Sheila Blair about the use of the word amal to introduce the name of the
author, the name of the artist, as explained in detail before in this chapter.
An extraordinary group portrait by the Iranian photographer Amir Qajar
depicts several children of Fath Ali Khān in front of a local backdrop, their
heads arranged in a pleasant and harmonic composition (fig. 67). A
Persian textile is used here as studio backdrop. The signature is written
once more in Thuluth script with some elements of Naskh, and reads Dār
al-Khalāfe and Amir Qajar, therefore identifying the atelier and the
photographer.
The next two images (figs. 68 and 69) are the work of the well-known
court photographer Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar who had attended the Dār al-
Fonun and, in 1869, traveled to Austria to study photography. He lived for
one and a half years in Vienna and for three years in Salzburg. He got in
touch through royal connections with the German/Austrian court photogra-
pher Fritz Luckhardt who sent him to the Salzburg polytechnic where all
different aspects of photography were taught. There he learned photolitho-
graphy, phototypy, zincography and some other minor printing techniques
from Jourda, an Austrian professor at the Polytechnic Institute in Salzburg.
When he returned to Iran, as explained by Zokā, he was made responsible
for the department of photography at Dār al-Fonun. But due to the lack of
printing newspapers at that time, he decided (or better said, was forced) to
start his career as a professional photographer in 1884. Later on, under the
reign of Mozaffar al-Din Shah, he was the head of the Imperial Printing
Press. The two images considered here are all framed and the passe-partout
bears an elaborated inscription identifying the photographer and where he
produced the work, in this case, in Dār al-Fonun. The signature reads:
“Special photographer to His Imperial Majesty” and then finishes with the
same depreciative formula as the painters did: “his humble servant”. Next
to this, we can read “The Photographic Department of the Dār al-Fonun
College”. Notice that the inscription is only in Persian. In a later stage, this
photographer added a French inscription as well, like it is the case in the
next two images which bear, both of them, the same signature identifying
photographer and the royal atelier and with the emblem of the Lion and
the Sun of the Qajar Dynasty (figs. 70 and 71). But there are further differ-
ences between the name-stamp used in earlier photographs and in the later
ones, since the royal emblem of the Lion and the Sun (Shir-o Khorshid) is
different: in the earlier photographs the lion is lying down and in the more
recent photographs the lion is standing up.
Similar ways of signing the photograph were used among different court
photographers, as we can see in the next image composed of nine studio
portraits (fig. 72), the three on the bottom using one of those elaborated
signatures that identify the photographer as Mohammad Jafar Mirzā and
the royal atelier, in Naskh script with Thuluth elements.
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 91

I am currently engaged in a systematic study of the signatures of all

Iranian court photographers and teachers at Dār al-Fonun, aiming at explor-
ing further the use of different formulas to sign, the type of script used,
and also whether the word amal is used systematically.
What about images of women in Qajar portraiture painting and photo-
graphy? How were women depicted and which kind of inscriptions do the
paintings bear, if at all?
Most of the portraits painted by artists during the Qajar era were men.
Nevertheless, there are enough portraits of women to deserve a close
analysis of them and focus on the use of calligraphic inscriptions in these
artworks. After a period of research on this topic, I have found that no cal-
ligraphic inscriptions are to be found in those works of art except, and not
always, the signature of the painter. Since they are idealizations of women,
no further identification is found, and this seems to be the reason for the
lack of further calligraphic inscriptions. Therefore, the treatment of the por-
traits of women and those of men is different when it comes to the pre-
sence and meaning of calligraphic inscriptions. In A woman balancing on
a knife (fig. 73, see full color section), we can find all the beauty attributes
of Qajar women: her moon-like face, her joined eyebrows, her bow-shaped
eyes and her small mouth. The acrobat’s body is flattened against the pic-
ture plane and is performing some impossible acrobatic exercises. There is
just one inscription placed between the face of the woman and the water-
melon, the word Khātun, which means dame or lady. Here, as in many
other such pictures that I have analyzed, not even the signature of the pain-
ter is to be found. This probably has to do with the fact that these artworks
were executed merely for decorative purposes and that they were not con-
sidered as important and valuable as those of the men that mostly depicted
Shahs and princes. For a painter, this kind of women portraits probably
would not give any status, whereas the fact that he would paint a portrait
of the ruler of the dynasty would immediately give him some extra credit.
This is especially appealing because it illustrates the fact that women in
Qajar portraiture were mere abstractions, idealizations and therefore, in any
case are not or cannot be identified. This is a remarkable difference again
in contrast to the portraits of men that present calligraphic inscriptions with
good factual information about both the person depicted and the painter.
As for photography, the number of portrait photographs of women by
Iranian photographers is almost non-exsitent compared to the number of
portraits of men. The only examples that I have found of portraits of
women that bear inscriptions were some belonging to the private albums
that Nāser al-Din Shah made with photographs of most of his wives and
many of his children. They are just informative inscriptions, with no artis-
tic intention, that sometimes reveal the name of the woman depicted. A
Persian word that is easy to find next to several of the photographs is
mord, which means dead.
92 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Before I finish this section, I want to show a portrait that bears inscrip-
tions in Thuluth to identify the sitter and his religious title. A portrait of
hojjat al-eslām wal-muslemin Āqā Seyyed Mohammad Mojtahed
Tabātabā’i (fig. 74), an important figure of the Constitutional Period20 is
yet another example of portrait photography with inscriptions and has
some peculiar elements that are well worthy studying.

The inscription is written in clear Thuluth script and starts with a phrase
that reads (in a very symbolic way) that the person depicted is a servant of
the Mahdi (the 12th Imam for the Shia).21 The exact translation of the text
written in this photograph by Witkam is:

Photograph/ (of) the most excellent person/ father of widows and

orphans, pillar/ of the state and the religion, proof of Islam and the
muslims/ Mr. Agha Mirzā Sayyid Muhammad the mugtahid/
Tabatabai, may increase/ his overflowings.22

Reflecting on the actual physical implementation of the inscription within

the photographic space, this image recalls (just formally), the way of im-
plementing inscriptions within the pictorial space in Qajar painting (with a
kind of cloud that frame the inscription).

Naskh, Koranic verses (and philosophical thoughts)

The third group is composed of images such as the one taken by the
Iranian photographer Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri (active from around the
1880s onwards) (fig. 75). It is one of the nineteenth-century Iranian photo-
graphs that show in a clearer way the relationship between calligraphy/text,
poetry, painting and photography, since it presents several typical Iranian
elements inherited from the Persian painting tradition. In the upper part of
the photograph we can see three groups of inscriptions, all of them in
Naskh script. Here we can appreciate that the script has been written in a
much more elaborate way than in the previous examples, with a more
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 93

noticeable deformation of the letters and with a more free understanding of

the space (some words are placed above or under the main line of the in-
scription). The main inscription is:

If I analyze the inscriptions in the portrait of this kneeling mullah, then in

the right cartouche we can read “photo of Hojjatoleslam” and in the left
cartouche “Fāzel Sharbiyāni Edamelboje”, i.e. the person depicted in the
photograph is being identified, exactly as in the Qajar portraits and in some
miniatures, as noted above. The inscription in the upper center is a philoso-
phical poem, a reflection about the importance of the meaning of the image
beyond its mere form, its mere outer appearance. The inscription reads
(free-translation): “the people see his image/ without noticing the deep
meaning that underlies it”. Finally, one can read in the lower inscription,
also in Naskh script, “the work of the photographer Mohammad Abd al-
Qāsem ebn al-Nuri, taken in the year 1305”. Here, interestingly, the word
‘amal has been used to introduce the signature on the photograph, as it is
traditionally done on objects, as I have already mentioned before. This is a
remarkable parallel in the way the inscriptions have been placed in all
kinds of objects and in photography. The pose of the man depicted here,
the traditional kneeling one inherited from the miniature portraits, together
with the paraphernalia (cushions behind the back, the Persian carpet and
the tasbi that the mullah is holding) result in an image that fully resembles
the studies of Persian miniatures. The main inscription is the one that is
especially relevant for my research because it has some deep philosophical
message, which stresses the difference between form and meaning. As sta-
ted by the Islamic art historian Yves Porter,

the duality between surat (form) and ma’ni (meaning) can be re-
lated to the Sufi notion of zāhir, “the exterior” and bātin, “the inter-
ior”, as well as to the Zoroastrian complementary opposition be-
tween menok and getik. Every creature has a double nature: getik,
the terrestrial, opaque, heavy, and menok, the ethereal, transparent,
subtle one (Porter 2000: 113)).

Further, in words of the scholar Johann Christoph Bürgel,

for the mystic spectator, all earthly beauty points to the Divine, and
by this very fact all the phenomena of creation transcend them-
selves, turn into symbols, which by their outward appearance (zahir,
exterior, form) veil and, at the same time partly unveil, an inner
94 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

meaning (batin, interior, ma‘ni, meaning), point to a higher layer of

existence. (Bürgel 1975: 34-38)

The relationship between outward form and inner essence is treated di-
rectly in the writings of the great medieval Iranian scholar Ghazali (1059-
1111) on the nature of beauty. In the words of the Islamic art historian
Priscilla Soucek,

Ghazali discusses several types of beauty and the manner in which

they are perceived by the senses in an ascending progression that
moves from the beauty of man to that of the creation and finally
focuses on how to define God’s beauty. The faculty of sight and the
related skill of visual imagination are important aspects of this pro-
cess. The eye is attracted to beauty and takes pleasure from its per-
ception (Soucek 2000: 102).

In the same way, another great Sufi poet, Mawlānā Jalāl al-Din Rumi
(Konya, 1207-1273), acknowledges the power of images and stresses their
inherent limitations. I have looked for books written by Iranian photogra-
phers in nineteenth-century, but in the first years after the invention of
photography only books written by Western photographers were translated
from French or English into Persian. In a later stage, the Iranian photogra-
phers started printing their own books written from their own perception of
the new medium. A book that is especially interesting for this topic that
deals with a philosophical and religious perception of the image, is Aksiyye
Hashryye, a 56-page book written in the time of Nāser al-Din Shah by the
photographer Mohammad-devne Ali Maskute al-Molk.23
The next photograph (fig. 76) also presents two inscriptions in elaborate
Naskh script. The upper one is the same poem that was used in figure 75. I
found this image in a different book from the one in which the first was
found. In this second one, the author of the photograph is not identified by
the author of the book or by any inscription in the photograph. But it could
be that the photo is also mounted on a frame like the previous one and per-
haps the inscription identifying the author is to be found there. In any case,
I believe that the maker of this second photograph is the same as that of
the first one, Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri, not only because he uses the same
poem but also because of the way he uses the inscriptions. In the lower in-
scription we can read “photo of the dead Mirzā-ye Sharestāni, in 1315
Qamari”, identifying in this way the sitter. The pose of the man depicted is
not a traditional one but a typical Victorian sitting pose. The table also has
been introduced in the studio and it is covered with an Iranian tablecloth.
On top of it we can see several books with the intention to mark the higher
education of the mullah depicted. One of the most interesting elements of
this photograph is the folded curtain on the right side, an element that was
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 95

introduced to Qajar portrait painting due to Western influence and later on

also in photography, as we can see in this example.
The image of an unknown dervish (fig. 77) shows that the continuation
of the tradition of illuminating paintings with poems did find its way into
photography. Two different kinds of scripts have been used: in the inner
frame the inscription is written in Naskh, which is the script that was nor-
mally used to write Koranic verses as is the case here, and the inscription
in the outer frame has been written in Nastal’iq script for the inscription in
the outer frame. Both inscriptions have been written in a very elaborate
way. In the outer frame, a poem about the figure of the dervishes and their
philosophy has been written.
96 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Here, the photograph seems to illustrate the text, as in the miniatures. The
inscription reads (outer frame): Pray for solace in the dervishes’ abode / to
the God of the dervishes / in the world Truth has no abode / other than in
the pure hearts of the dervishes / For the tiniest morsels in this world /
kings must beg the dervishes / Let my body and soul be sacrified / to him
whose body and soul is sacrified to the dervishes.24 In the inner frame of
the photograph, we can read several verses from the Koran, the one known
as the Throne Verse (2:255 and beginning only of 2:256). The translation
by Witkam reads:

2.225: Allah is He besides Whom there is no god, the Everliving,

the Self-subsisting by Whom all subsist; slumber does not overtake
Him nor sleep; whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the
earth is His; who is he that can intercede with Him but by His per-
mission? He knows what is before them, and they cannot compre-
hend anything out of His knowledge except pleases Him, His
knowledge extends over the heavens and the earth, and the preser-
vation of them both tires Him not, and He is the Highest, the
Greatest.
2.256: There is no compulsion in religion; …. (Throne Verse, in the
Shakir translation).
Oh, ‘Ali!, oh, Abliya! (=?); oh, Father of Hasan!; oh, Father of
Turab! (=?), take me.

As explained to me by Witkam in the course of an e-mail exchange in

February 2008, the Throne Verse is one of the most popular Koranic quota-
tions. It is often seen in inscriptions in buildings or on objects (ceramics or
the like). He noted that Blair in the index of her book Islamic Inscriptions
has a considerable number of references to sura 2:255. It is by far the most
frequent Koranic quotation she mentions.25 In the case of the Throne
Verse, there is no practical purpose in its use on a photograph and therefore
it is easier to see it as calligraphy than in other cases where the text gives
us plain factual information.
As a conclusion it is important to stress that independently of which
kind of information is given in the inscription (factual or interpretative),
the language is always poetic. This is probably the most important conclu-
sion of my research on this topic since it establishes a clear link between
the use and function of text in painting and photography. Consistently,
most of the inscriptions found in nineteenth-century Iranian photographs
are poems or have been written in a poetic tone, even if they are not real
poems.
The relation between image and written text is so well rooted in the cul-
tural subconscious of the Iranian artist that nowadays it is very easy to find
such examples in every field of Iranian visual arts. It is, indeed, one of the
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 97

most important and defining aspects of Iranian contemporary art and it can
be found in painting, animation, video-art and photography. In the visual
arts, some artists find themselves looking back to their past, in search of
inspiration. To be sure, history never repeats itself in the same way, but it
rescues old themes from the past and presents them in new garb. This ap-
plies to Iranian photography as well. The work of the most internationally
recognized Iranian photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat is a good
example of this. She has lived in New York since 1972 and her work
“Women of Allah” (1993-97), a photographic series of militant Muslim
women that subverts the stereotype and examines the Islamic idea of mar-
tyrdom, consists of several photographs with handwritten inscriptions.26
The verses handwritten on the photographs emphasize Neshat’s beliefs.
Other Iranian artists, such as the Iranian graphic designer Rezā Abedini27
caught my attention with the use of parts of one Qajar photograph and cal-
ligraphic inscriptions mixed in perfect harmony with the image, in the way
in which Persian miniatures and calligraphic inscriptions do. His work is a
good combination of his creativity in producing personal graphic design
and his individual skill in adapting the knowledge and achievements of
Iran’s artistic heritage, making it new and compelling. Even among sculp-
tors there is a current that exemplifies the desire to move calligraphy into
the three-dimensional world. Some Iranian artists create sculptural calligra-
phy, like the pioneer in this field Parviz Tanavoli.28

Text and nineteenth-century photography in other countries in Asia

I have already suggested at the beginning of this section that it is important
to ask if the use of calligraphy in Iranian photography is a particular and
defining element of this culture, or if it is also used by other cultures like
Chinese or Japanese. Calligraphy is regarded in China and Japan as the su-
preme artistic achievement. Painting, which uses the same basic materials
of brush and ink on paper or occasionally silk, became the sister of calli-
graphy, while poetry, for its expression is linked inseparably to writing.29 I
have researched, mainly through printed books, nineteenth-century
Japanese and Chinese photography, and it seems that the Japanese photo-
graphers at least used calligraphic inscriptions within the photographic
space. From around 1000 Japanese photographs analyzed (taken by
Japanese photographers) from the nineteenth century and early twentieth
century, I have found a few with some Japanese calligraphy on the surface
of the photograph. The use of text or inscriptions in the photographic space
may have been inspired by Japanese traditional painting in particular by
the ukiyo-e, or woodprints. The term ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating
world,” refers to a style of genre painting and woodblock printing that ap-
peared in Japan in the seventeenth century and that was practiced until the
98 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

nineteenth century, more exactly the Edo Era (1603-1868). As the

Japanese art historian Tadashi Kobayashi states,

the phrase “floating world,” which was originally associated with a

Buddhist world view and alluded to the ephemerality of man’s exis-
tence, subsequently came to suggest a hedonistic preoccupation
with the present moment, with the latest fashions, pursuits, and life-
style of an urban culture, and implied a certain chicness. (Tadashi
1992: 65)

The three themes that recur most often in ukiyo-e painting are the beautiful
women (bijin) and their world in the tea house and at home, the samurai,
and the landscape. The influence of the ukiyo-e painting tradition on nine-
teenth-century Japanese photography is also evident in hand-colored photo-
graphy, which not only adopts the paintings’ color palette, but also copies
the poses of the persons depicted and even the objects that they are hold-
ing.30 A married woman inspects her black teeth in a mirror (fig. 78), a ty-
pical ukiyo-e, was painted by Kitagawa Utamaro (1754-1806). On the top
right corner we find a cartouche divided into three parts; in the two outer
sections we can read some calligraphic inscriptions: in the right section the
title of the series to which this ukiyo-e belongs is written in black ink
(Fujin sogaku jittai, “Ten Women Type Physiognomies”) and in red ink
we can see a seal that reveals the identity of one of the owners of this art-
work. On the left side of the cartouche written in black ink we can read
somi (physiognomic seen) on the top, and on the bottom the name of the
painter, Utamaro. This method of placing calligraphic inscriptions within
the pictorial space is particular to the Japanese painting tradition.
The Japanese photographer Yokoyama Matsusaburo (1838-1884) also
used text consistently within the photographic space, and he even chose to
write both in red and black ink, like the painters did.31 The fact that other
Japanese photographers such as Kojima Ryua also tended to add inscrip-
tions within the photographic space, points to the fact that this combination
of the two techniques, image and text, was an element particular to some
indigenous Japanese photography, like it is the case in Iran. On the portrait
of Nitta Tomi taken by Yokoyama in 1872 (fig. 79) we can read an inscrip-
tion written in Kanji script with black ink. The first four signs reveal the
date on which the photograph was taken, “ca. the 5th year of the Meiji
Era”, and the next three signs reveal that the technique used was albumin
paper, “Japanese-lack paper”. In red ink the photographer has written very
detailed information about the process, the identity of the sitter and where
the photograph was taken: “Nitta Tomi, sister of [illegible sign], the 7th
year of the Meiji Era a photo-studio was opened next to the five-stock pa-
goda of the premises of the Asakusa-Temple”.32
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 99

As pointed out by Helen Westgeest while viewing these images together,

this way of placing the calligraphic inscriptions on a white strip was also
done previously in the Ukiyo-es or Japanese woodprints. This indicates
that the traditional Japanese painting tradition may have influenced the aes-
thetics used by some nineteenth-century Japanese photographers, like
Yokoyama who was also an outstanding painter. Another portrait of the
same woman, but taken by Yokoyama two years after, depicts the woman
in the traditional kneeling pose (fig. 80). Here the calligraphic inscriptions
have been placed on the left side of the image, again on a white strip and
they have been written in red ink. One of the most interesting elements in
this photograph is, again, the inscription placed on a white strip on the
right top corner. The text has been written in Kanji script with red ink and
gives us exhaustive information about the date, the technique used to pro-
duce the photograph and factual information about the person depicted. In
the top right, Yokoyama informs us that this photograph constitutes the be-
ginning of his work on women portraits and identifies the sitter as Nitta
Tomi. Under this information, we find another inscription that informs us
of the fact that Yokoyama opened a photo studio on the premises of the
Asakusa-Temple. On the left, the inscription informs us of the date in
which the photograph was taken, “ca. the 7th year of the Meiji Era” and
where, “in Yokoyama’s studio in Ikenohata”.
The last photograph selected here from this photographer depicts
Yamamoto Rempei, disciple of Matsusaburo (fig. 81). This image has been
heavily overpainted with oil with a technique that he developed himself.
As stated by the Japanese curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of
Photography, Yokoe Fuminori,

he called this technique Shashin Abura-e or oil painting photograph,

by which the film covering the photograph is peeled off and the
photo is colored with oil pigments. This was probably the comple-
tion of a way of expression synthesizing both techniques of photo-
graphy and oil painting, of which he had been in quest for many
years. (Yokoe 1997: 182-83)

Portrait of Yamamoto Rimpei, is actually an example of his shashin abura-

e or “photographic oil paintings” (the original is in color), as he has indi-
cated in the lower part of the inscription in the top right white strip, in
Kanji script: “the back of the photograph has been hand-colored”. This
agrees with Bennett’s description of this technique, that involved peeling
off the emulsion covering the face of a photograph and then painting the
rear side with oil paints (Bennett 2006: 83). Under this inscription we can
read, “the work of the master Yokoyama”. On the bottom right white strip
we find a very long and detailed inscription that informs us of the date on
which Yokoyama started experimenting with this technique and how: “ca.
100 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

the 13th year of the Meiji Era he discovered this technique and in the 15th
year of the era the technique was refined. At that time, the photographer
hired Mr Ryoichi Komamezawa as his assistant and they experimented
with this technique together. His assistant started in the 17th year of the
Meiji Era to…. [illegible]”. The name of the sitter has been written in the
left bottom corner: disciple Yamamoto Rimpei.
Another Japanese author who used calligraphy in his work was Kojima
Ryua. The collage of Kojima Ryua and his family (fig. 82) taken in 1873
is astonishing and very avant-garde for its time. It is both aesthetically
pleasing and intriguing. Ryua himself is placed on the left side of the final
image, resting his elbow on his camera and looking at his wife and child
who have been photographed in two different poses and then pasted to-
gether to complete this unique collage. A calligraphic inscription that reads
“willow; frog” has been placed on a white strip that seems to have been
painted to give the impression of a piece of wood, like the Ukiyo-es. One
of its corners is broken and the fact that in another of his photographs we
find the same white-wooden strip with broken corner, seems to point to the
fact that it may have been an effect created by the author. This is also the
case in the next image, a self-portrait of Kojima Ryua taken around 1870
(fig. 83) in which he is depicted in the traditional Japanese kneeling pose.
The calligraphic inscription reads: “Ryua Kojima; photographer; born in
Mino (today, province of Gifu); as a child he was named Gorosaku; wil-
low; frog”. The first three signs give factual information, but the last two
“willow-frog” may have some poetic meaning (referring probably to a
well-known Japanese fairy tale).
Recently, I have found some Indian photographs with inscriptions. A
portrait of Nawwāb Rāj Begum Sāhibe of Oudh (fig. 84), taken by the
Indian photographer Ahmed Ali Khān around 1855, presents an interesting
and quite long inscription in Persian:

which reads, as translated by Witkam:

The image of Raja Begum Sahiba, who belongs to the most fortu-
nate excellent sultans of the world, may God perpetuate his (her?)
reign and power, and may he (she?) … in Indian clothing full of
gold and studded with gold ornaments, ornamented with jewels in
the hand and the ear, (clothed) in gold woven textile, …. sitting on
the throne (of sculpted wood?)/ imaging to meet the excellent sultan
of the world, may God perpetuate his reign and his power in the
world… seated on a silver throne/ at the age of twenty-three years
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 101

in the year 1271 of the higra (1854-1855), coinciding with the year
of the happy ascension to the unrivalled throne, (in) the abode of
power Lucknow.

It is important to note that when comparing the use of text or calligraphic

inscriptions in these three countries, the decorative tendency and elaborated
ornament of the Iranian calligraphy contrasts with a more sober use of
Japanese and Indian calligraphy. However, my research has been much
more thorough in the Iranian case than in the other two countries.
To conclude, the use of text within the photographic space is one of the
cultural components of a photograph analyzed here, as I have shown in this
chapter through visual analysis of the role and meaning of the inscriptions
in the photographic surface. Text/calligraphy and image always have been
closely related in the Iranian visual culture tradition. The use and function
of text or the calligraphic inscriptions in Iranian photography, whether for
informative or as a philosophical purposes is mostly influenced and inher-
ited from the Persian painting tradition, though it is not so uniquely
Iranian.
The influence of the traditional use of calligraphy or text in painting and
later on in nineteenth-century photography is apparent. The function of the
calligraphic inscriptions used in Qajar painting has not only an aesthetic
purpose but also an informative one. In this kind of paintings, the name of
the person depicted is placed in the upper part of the picture, whereas the
name of the author is placed in the lower part. This is all valid if we take
into consideration male portraiture, but in the case of female portraiture,
the situation is different since these artworks are in most cases unsigned
and without any other kind of calligraphic inscriptions. The same happens
in photography when taking into consideration the portraiture of women.
The hierarchy implied by the way in which the text has been implemented
in the pictorial space is not to be found in portraiture of men in photogra-
phy. This is an important difference between the two mediums. The way in
which the text or calligraphic inscription has been implemented within the
pictorial and photographic space is also related: sometimes the text is
placed within cartouches, other times it flows freely in the artwork’s space.
Regardless of the content or meaning of the script, the language used in
the inscriptions placed on photographs is a poetic one.
Another important conclusion is that signatures of the photographers on
the photographs are sometimes introduced by the word ‘amal, as happens
with most of the inscriptions placed on objects to introduce the name of
the author, the artist.
102 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Notes

1 Sura is one of the 114 sections into which the Koran is divided. Suras are subdivided into
ayat, “verses”. Muslims believe that these suras were given to the last of Allah’s prophets,
Mohammad. Mohammad is said to have built on and perfected the teachings of Abraham,
Moses and Jesus.
2 See: Abbott 1939; Lings 1977; Safadi 1978; Schimmel 1970; Schimmel 1990; Blair 1998
and 2006.
3 E-mail exchange in February 2009. I am grateful to Just Jan Witkam for his remarks con-
cerning this matter and for his valuable help with the translation of several of the Persian
and Arabic texts written in the photographs selected for this chapter.
4 Sims 2002: 270.
5 Eslami structure is a typical ornamental and decorative background used in Persian minia-
ture painting.
6 Omar Khayyam (born in Nishapur, 1048-1122) was a Persian poet, mathematician, philo-
sopher and astronomer. He is believed to have written about thousand four-line verses or
quatrains (rubaai’s). In the English-speaking world, he was introduced through The
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edgard Fitzgerald (1809-1883).
7 For a detailed study of the Ardabil carpets and the inscriptions written on them, see:
Stead, R. (1974), The Ardabil Carpets. Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu.
8 Sacrifice
9 Calm
10 The earth and the heavens.
11 Love-struck
12 Eloquent
13 Effulgence
14 Handsome
15 Ritter 2008.
16 This is actually a page of an album, a watercolor representation of Fath’ Ali Shah seated
on the Sun Throne (Takht-I Khurshid). Printed in Diba 1998: 177.
17 Printed in Diba 1998: 184.
18 To see this painting, please consult Diba 1998: 186.
19 See, for instance: Diba 1998; Falk 1973; and Sims 2002.
20 The Iranian Constitutional Revolution took place between 1905 and 1911. The
Revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Iran. The system of constitutional
monarchy created by the decree of Mozaffar al-Din Shah that was established in Persia as
a result of the Revolution ultimately came to an end in 1925 with the dissolution of the
Qajar Dynasty and the ascension of Rezā Shah Pahlavi to the throne. Tabatabata’i was a
very important religious constitutionalist. Further reading: Vanessa Martin, H.E. Chehabi
(eds.) (2010), Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular Politics, Cultural Transforma-
tions and Transnational Connections, and History of the Iranian Constitutional Revolu-
tion: Tarikhe Mashrute-ye Iran, Volume I, translated into English by Evan Siegel (2006).
Costa Mesa: Mazda Publications.
21 According to Twelver Shi’as, Imam Hujjat al-Mahdi (or Hujjat ibn Hasan ibn Ali) is the
twelfth Imam and the Mahdi, the ultimate savior of humankind. Other Shi’a schools ad-
here to different Imam successions and do not, along with Sunnís, consider ibn-Al-Hasan
the Mahdi. Shi’as believe that for several reasons, God concealed the twelfth and current
Shi’a Imam, al-Mahdi, from humankind. They believe that al-Mahdi will reappear when
the World has fallen into chaos and war and that he will bring justice and peace to the
World. Further reading: Corbin, H. (1993), History of Islamic Philosophy, translated by
Liadain Sherrard and Philip Sherrard. Kegan Paul International.
22 Words in grey here mean they are not legible.
THE WRITTEN IMAGE 103

23 I am grateful to Mohammad Rezā Tahmasbpour for helping me with this matter.

24 Translation taken from Damandan 2004: 154.
25 Blair 1998. Witkam went through the index to find those references: p 69: common on
mosques; p 73: part of a limited repertoire of Koranic texts on buildings; p 74: Fatimid in-
scription on walls of Cairo; p 80: on a minaret in Tirmidh; p 137: inscription in wood in
Beyshehir; p 139: on the Qala’un mosque in Cairo; p 147: on a walnut chest (to contain a
Koran); pp. 156-57: on tiles; pp. 195-96; and pp. 213-215: as the Koranic verse used most
on objects.
26 For further reading about the work of Shirin Neshat: Dabashi, H, “The Gun and the Gaze:
Shirin Neshat’s Photography” and Zaya, O., “Sounds of Desire, Zones of Contention
(Islam, Women and The Veil)”, in Shirin Neshat, Women of Allah. Milano: Marco Noire
Editore (1997); Schmidt, B./Stammer, B. E. (2005), Shirin Neshat. Berlin: Steidl Verlag.
27 Abedini was awarded the Prince Claus Award in 2006.
28 Further reading about this topic in: Blair, S. (2006), “From Traditional Styles to Graphic
Design and Calligraphic Art”, in Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburg: Edinburg University
Press: 589-627.
29 Shimizu and Rosenfield 1984.
30 Pérez González 2008.
31 For an analysis of the work of this photographer, see: Pérez González 2011.
32 I am very grateful to Jun Ueno (Japanisches Kulturinstitute in Cologne, Germany) for his
translations of all the texts on the Japanese photographs selected here.
3 POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD
BY THE SITTER

For Pilar Lombardo

Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes:

I constitute myself in the process of posing,
I instantaneously make another body for myself,
I transform myself in advance into an image.
Roland Barthes (Barthes 1981: 10)

One might inquire into the origin of the traditional kneeling pose in early
nineteenth- century Iranian photography. One can rule out that this pose
has found its way into Iranian photography through the apparatus and art
itself (as in the use the of chair, for example). Beyond the cultural habit of
the time – sitting on floor mats – it seems that this particular position,
along with the pose of holding various objects by sitters, is inherited from
Persian miniature paintings. Another topic that I will research in this chap-
ter is the difference of pose and objects held by men and women in paint-
ing and later in photography. In order to achieve this, I will undertake an
exhaustive visual analysis of the pose and objects held by the sitters both
in the Persian painting tradition and in nineteenth-century Iranian photogra-
phy, with the aim of defining similarities and differences between the two
techniques.

3.1 Gesture, posture and pose

The terms gesture and posture are closely related in meaning. What is a
gesture and what is a posture?
The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, 1989) defines gesture as a
“movement of body or any part of it that is expressive of thought or feel-
ing”. In this sense, gesture includes any kind of bodily movement or pos-
ture (including facial expression) which is a message to the observer. The
literary theorist Fernando Poyatos defines gesture as,

a conscious or unconscious body movement made mainly with the

head, the face alone, or the limbs, learned or somatogenic, serving
106 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

as a primary communicative tool, dependent or independent from

verbal language; either simultaneous or alternating with it, and mod-
ified by the conditioning background (smiles, eye movements, a
gesture of beckoning, a tic, etc). (Poyatos 1981: 375)

He defines posture as,

a conscious or unconscious general position of the body, more static

than gesture, learned or somatogenic, either simultaneous or alter-
nating with verbal language, modified by social norms and by the
rest of the conditioning background, and used less as a communica-
tive tool, although it may reveal affective states and social status
(sitting, standing, joining both hands behind one’s back while walk-
ing, etc). (Poyatos 1981: 375)

The topic of gesture and posture has been thoroughly researched. Since the
Renaissance there have been many physiognomists, such as the Swiss J.C.
Lavater (1741-1801), who have attempted to codify the facial expressions
of emotion and character. He was certain that,

the wise physiognomist who studied and used the science of phy-
siognomy with discernment could read the internal from the exter-
nal, the character of humankind from the countenance and from its
correct graphic representation. (Stemmler 1993: 151)

The notion that inner human character could be interpreted through facial
expressions persisted throughout nineteenth-century portraiture in all visual
media. The conviction that a clear correspondence existed between inner
moods and outward appearances also informed scientific experiments on
human gestures and facial expressions, such as the photographs of mental
patients taken by Dr Hugh Welch Diamond in the 1850s, by the French
doctor Guillaume Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1975)1 or by
the French physician and neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893).2
Also, as remarked by the English historian Sir Keith Thomas, “in the nine-
teenth century Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) The Expression of Emotions
in Man and Animals gave new support to the view that physical expres-
sions might be biologically inherited” (Thomas 1991: 2). Like Diamond,
Duchanne and Charcot, Darwin’s works emphasized facial expression as
an infallible indicator of psychological states.
Most modern writings on the subject however start from the assumption
that gesture is not a universal language but the product of social and cultur-
al differences. In the words of Thomas, “there are many languages of ges-
ture and many dialects” (Thomas 1991: 3). As the French sociologist
Marcel Mauss states, for example, “it has been suspected for a long time
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 107

that certain standing and sitting postures might be culturally significant”

(Mauss 1979). Further, the anthropologist Gordon W. Hewes argues that
“human postural habits have anatomical and physiological limitations, but
there are a great many choices the determinants for which appear to be
mostly cultural” (Hewes 1955: 231). The ways in which we sit, kneel or
stand are determined not only by the human anatomy but foremost by cul-
ture. As pointed out by Hewes, “the peoples of the world differ in posture
styles just as they do in styles of clothing, housing, cooking and music”
(Hewes 1957: 123). He explains that,

postures and related motor-habits are intimately linked to many as-

pects of daily life: they affect the design of our clothing, footgear,
furniture, dwellings, offices, vehicles, tools and machines.
Moreover, they speak an eloquent language in social intercourse.
Most of us look to postural cues as well as to facial expressions and
speech itself, in our never-ending efforts to interpret or evaluate
people’s motives, moods or behaviour. (Hewes 1957: 123)

Here I would like to stress the difference in meaning of the terms posture
and pose. The second one is more limited than the first. Pose is applied
when considering photographs or paintings: the sitter’s pose. Posture is a
wider term used in a more general context.
In its general sense, posing can be considered a way in which the “sub-
ject“ responds to the implied presence of the beholder. In the words of the
Turkish photography historian Fulya Ertem, “it is by assuming a posture,
an imaginary self, in front of any captivating gaze. When in front of the
photographic camera, posing can be seen as a reaction to the camera’s
deadly capture” (Ertem 2006: 10). The French theorist Roland Barthes, ex-
tending the pose to inanimate things, also describes it as,

an instant, however brief, in which a real thing happened to be mo-

tionless in front of the eye. I project the present photograph’s immo-
bility upon the past shot, and it is this arrest which constitutes the
pose. (Barthes 1981: 78)

Posing is thus a moment of immobility where the sitter turns him/herself

into a frozen image. It can also be considered as a moment where the sitter
tends to imitate a certain image s/he has in his/her mind in order to project
it onto her/his body and gesture. However, the American film theorist and
art historian Kaja Silverman in The Treshold of the Visible World claims
that,

posing is not imitative of a pre-existing image, it is imitative of

photography itself, as the pose does not only arrest the body,
108 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

“hyperbolising the devitalising effects of all photographic represen-

tation” but also resembles “three-dimensional photography”.
(Silverman 1996: 202)

Much like Silverman, the American post-modernist critic Craig Owens

says:

What do I do when I pose for a photograph? I freeze... as if antici-

pating the still I am about to become; mimicking its opacity, its still-
ness; inscribing, across the surface of my body, photography’s mor-
tification of the flesh. (Owens 1992: 210)

Silverman refers to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s description

of the phenomenon of mimicry in his Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psycho-analysis and argues that,

for Lacan, although mimicry is the behavior of certain species of

insects, which seem to adopt the shape and natural color of their en-
vironment for protective reasons, mimicry is more an attempt to be-
come part of a particular picture rather than an attempt to imitate a
pre-existing image. (Silverman 1996: 201)

“Mimicry is thus a reproduction in three-dimensional space with solids and

voids: sculpture-photography”, as the Czech philosopher Vilém Flusser
calls it in Towards a Philosophy of Photography (Flusser 2000: 50). For
me the study of gesture and pose through photography is of more than
purely antiquarian interest, since I believe that gesture formed an indispen-
sable element in the social interaction of the past and it can offer a key to
some of the fundamental values and assumptions underlying any given so-
ciety, therefore, the study of the pose and gesture of the sitters in portrait
photography gives us important clues to understand the mentality of that
time. In the words of Thomas, “to interpret an account for a gesture is to
unlock the whole social and cultural system of which it is a part” (Thomas
1991: 11).
The anthropologist Weston Labarre argues that,

many of these motor habits in one culture are open to grave misun-
derstanding in another. So much of the expression of emotion in
our culture is open to serious misinterpretation in another. There is
no “natural” language of emotional gesture. (Labarre 1947-8: 55)

Nevertheless, he also says, “in the language of gesture all over the world
there are varying mixtures of the physiologically conditioned response and
the purely cultural one, and it is frequently difficult to analyze and
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 109

segregate the two” (Labarre 1947-48: 57). Some research has shown that
there are different gestures for the same meaning in different cultures and
it has often been suggested that teachers of foreign languages should con-
sider gesture not only so that students learn to speak the language but also
that misunderstanding of gestural usage be avoided.3 The emerging field of
gesture studies is actually especially concerned with the exploration of the
relationship between gesture and sign language, and how the gesture varies
according to cultural and language differences.4
In this chapter, I will explore whether this cultural dependence of pose
or gesture is visible in nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography. I
will analyze if there is a noticeable difference between the pose or gesture
of the person depicted in Western portrait studio photography and Iranian
portrait studio photography, and consequently a difference in meaning.
When analyzing photographs, one must assume that it is possible to dis-
tinguish between postures imposed upon the subjects by the photographer
and those, which are habitual or indigenous. As Hewes states, “there are
pictures in which the subjects have certainly been arranged in a line for the
purposes of photographic composition, but in which seemingly indigenous
postures also occur” (Hewes 1955: 234). In the cases in which the Western
photographer imposes his wishes, in a probably unconscious way, he will
at the same time impose typical Western poses that will probably change
the natural native ones that the person depicted would take on. As the
photography historian William C. Darrah concludes when considering
cartes de visite from the nineteenth century,

there are four basic descriptive aspects of a portrait: pose, back-

ground, lighting and characterization, the latter being partly a result
of the first three. There are only three types of studio poses: head or
bust, seated and standing, although there are many variations of
each. The seated figure may be half-length to full length. The stand-
ing figure is usually in full length. From 1860 to 1890, portraits
were roughly equally distributed among the three posing types,
although heads were somewhat more popular in the early 1860s and
again in the 1870s. (Darrah 1981: 26)

The seated pose was favored by many photographers because the subject
was more relaxed and it was easier to imply activity. The popular standing
full pose was fraught with difficulties. The subject was obliged to stand
motionless for a minute or more while the final adjustments were made in
exposing the negative. An iron head clamp, adjustable for height, with a
tripod base, held the subject firmly in position. This classification is valid
for Western photography, but for Iranian photography I would add another
pose: kneeling, as another possible way of sitting. This pose is commonly
found in Iranian studio portrait photography in the nineteenth century and,
110 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

under the influence of Western poses on the studio, the seated pose is also
to be found at a later stage. I will try to demonstrate the evolution of the
pose from the ground to the chair, from kneeling to the sitting position in
my visual analysis of Persian painting and of nineteenth-century portrait
studio photographs. Therefore, it is relevant to briefly explain how chairs
appeared, evolved and were imported from other countries. In order to do
so, I will introduce the ideas and research of the American architect Galen
Cranz concerning the origins and role of the chair in our lives and will re-
flect after that about its role in the studio.
All around the world, the chair and sitting on a chair has become a sym-
bol of Westernization. Even if the chair was discovered in Asia as we shall
see further below, it was in Europe that it took the main role, as far as fur-
niture is concerned, in the life of common people. Conversely, as stated by
Cranz,

when Gandhi wanted to make a point about the importance of re-

taining traditional culture, he chose to sit cross-legged on the floor,
self-consciously rejecting the chair and the modernism that goes
with it. In non-Western cultures, the specific connotations associated
with chairs are different, but the chair is still used to communicate
status differences. In the words of Crams, when it was introduced to
China in the second century A.D., the Chinese called it the “barbar-
ian (their word for anything foreign) bed”. It connoted informal use
because of its years of association with military camps, temporary
travel furniture, and garden use. It was more like a cot, and for
years was never used indoors. People sat on it tailor-fashion (cross-
legged), showing contempt, indifference, or extreme confidence.
Nine hundred years later, a new seating type evolved: the folding
chair with a back. This chair then became acceptable and was used
by all, but the language of dignity and honor retained the use of the
term “mat” rather than “chair”. (Cranz 2000: 29)

The word “chair” comes from the Greek. It is a contraction of cathedra,

which is in turn a compound of kata, meaning “down”, and hedra, from
“to sit”. A chair is a piece of furniture with a back, and usually four legs,
on which one person sits. But so is a throne. However, the word “throne”
has a different origin. As remarked by Cranz,

It comes from the Indo-European base dher, meaning “to hold or

support”. The throne supports, while the chair is a place to sit
down. A throne suggests the palanquins on which a potentate might
be carried, while the underlying meaning of a chair is quite differ-
ent. Physically, almost anyone can sit down, whereas only a very
privileged few can be carried. Neither thrones nor chairs originated
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 111

in classical Greece; they are far older. Chair sitting was already a
widespread practice in ancient Egypt of 2850 B.C. The oldest phy-
sical chairs we have come from the tomb of the young pharaoh
Tutankhamen, who died in about 1352 B.C. (Cranz 2000: 31)

Chairs, stools and benches were in use in Egypt and Mesopotamia, there-
fore, at least 5,000 years ago. While commoners and slaves sat on stools or
benches, the kings, priests and other exalted personages in ancient Egypt
used chairs. The Chinese began using chairs fairly late in their history:
2,000 years ago they sat on the floor, as the Japanese and Koreans do to-
day. In southern and Southeast Asia chairs have never become items of
common use. As stated by Hewes, “even in the Middle East and North
Africa the Islamic peoples seem to have returned to sitting on the floor,
possibly because of the cultural prestige of the nomadic Arabs” (Hewes
1957: 127). No less widely practiced than chair-sitting is the deep squat.
Ranking slightly behind chair-sitting and the deep squat is the cross-legged
sitting posture that we call sitting in the “Turkish” or “tailor” fashion.
Sitting on the heels with the knees resting on the floor is the formal sitting
position for both men and women in Japan, and is the regular prayer posi-
tion in the Islamic world and many other cultures in Eurasia. We shall see
examples of all of these positions in paintings and photographs.
We need anthropologists to remind us that almost everything including
how we hold our bodies should be understood in its cultural context. An
Indian might squat to wait for the train or bus, or just while observing life
pasing by; a Japanese woman might kneel to drink tea or to eat; and an
Arab might sit crossed-legged to read a book. Hewes, as I have already
noted, emphasized that postural variations are culturally determined.
Sitting, like other postures, is predominantly regulated all around the world
according to gender, age and social status. In mosques, Muslims sit and
kneel on richly carpeted floors, that do more than protect the knees; all
who enter a mosque (or home) take off their shoes, ostensibly so that no
dirt is brought onto the carpets where people will put their hands and faces.
I will come back later to this matter while analyzing the paintings and
photographs selected for this chapter. In the words of Hewes, “among habi-
tual chair-sitters over the world, there are a surprising variety of cultural
differences in sitting posture, many of which can be classified on the basis
of the way the legs or ankles are crossed” (Hewes 1957: 125). Here it is
useful to show a part of the postural typology used in the compilation of
data for Hewes’ article (fig. 85). As Hewes explains, these drawings are
for the most part based on photographs in the ethnographic literature.
However, from the corpus of photographs that I have analyzed for this
chapter, both Western and Iranian, it will be evident that this variety of
chair-sitting postures is not to be found in the photo studios where the typi-
cal Victorian sitting pose is more widely used: the two legs lying parallel
112 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

next to each other (see posture number 30 and 31 in Hewes’ drawings);

even though, in Iranian photographs, due to the lack of experience of sit-
ters at that time with chair sitting, some very peculiar leg-poses appear as
we shall see later in this chapter while analyzing some photographs, result-
ing in a more varied and interesting repertoire than the uniform Western
one. In this case the role of the photographer was definitive in imposing,
or at least influencing, a definite chair-sitting pose in the photographer’s
studio. The most common sitting posture, though, in nineteenth-century
Iranian photography is number 103 in Hewes’ drawings, sitting on the
heels with the knees resting on the floor.

3.2 Pose and gesture in the Persian painting tradition

In this section, I explore which are the traditional poses used in the Persian
painting tradition. A fundamental topic that I consider is how has the use
of the chair in Western portrait painting influenced the transition from the
traditional kneeling pose to the sitting pose in Persian painting and later on
in photography. Further, my aim is to solve the question of whether there
is a difference in the poses in which men and women are depicted.

Men in painting
There are many examples to be found in Persian miniature painting that
depict people in the Persian traditional pose, that is, sitting on their heels
with the knees resting on the floor (Hewes’ posture 103). Sultan-Husayn
Mirzā Bayqara, a wonderful miniature from Herat, ca. 1500 (fig. 53, see
full color section) introduced already in the previous chapter, presents the
sitter sitting on his heels, one hand holding a handkerchief. Seated figure
holding a cup, mid-seventeenth century, presents a figure in the same pose
both because he is seated on his heels and because of the position and pose
of the arms and hands (fig. 54, see full color section). Rezā Abbāsi paint-
ing a picture of a European man by Mo’in (pupil of Rezā Abbāsi
(ca.1565-1635)), shows Riza as an old man, wearing spectacles and a tur-
ban. He is sitting on the ground with a low stand in front of him, but the
picture is propped on a bent knee, as if to bring it closer to his face. His
subject is a European man (fig. 56, see full color section).
There are also many examples of this kind of pose to be found in Qajar
portraiture painting. Fath ‘Ali Shah (d. 1834), the second of Qajar Rulers,
is depicted on the next portrait seated on his heels (fig. 86, see full color
section). As explained by the Islamic art historian Eleonor Sims, he is the
most recognizable personage of any Iranian monarch up to the era of
photography:
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 113

his fine slender figure, his pale complexion and blazing black eyes
under wide black brows, and especially his long and magnificent
black beard, are instantly recognizable, whether they are on the tin-
iest of enameled gold pendants or the largest of oil-painted canvases
or rock reliefs (Sims 2002: 275).

This painting is dated 1797 and is signed by Mirzā Bābā, Fath Ali Shah’s
chief painter from the very beginning of his reign. As remarked by Sims,

for the first of the large single-figure oil paintings, Mirzā Baba ap-
pears to have isolated the Shah from among his courtiers. Fath ‘Ali
Shah still kneels, in the old-fashioned position, on a carpet spread
on a takht with a low wooden balustrade behind him. His posture is
erect and he is holding a jeweled mace that, together with his level
gaze, gives the sitter an effect of great majesty. The seventeenth-
century European prop of the draped curtain on one side of the pic-
ture is utilized, but the background is essentially “a neutral sha-
dowed space that increases his majestic isolation”. (Sims 2002:
275).

Mirzā Bābā repeated this kneeling image of the Shah several times, as did
other painters, although later portraits made use of the standing pose or
seated the Shah in a European armchair-throne, as we will see shortly. In
the next portrait, also of Fath ‘Ali Shah and already introduced in the pre-
vious chapter, we again find the traditional Persian pose, kneeling on a car-
pet with a cushion behind him, holding a mace (fig. 64). This portrait is
the latest in a series of dated paintings depicting Fath Ali Shah seated on a
carpet. The painting is signed by Mehr Ali and is dated 1813-14.
The sitting and the standing poses are also to be found among Qajar por-
traits. Fath Ali Shah Seated on a Chair Throne (fig. 87, see full color sec-
tion), is attributed to Mehr Ali5, circa 1800-1806. Oddly enough, this
painting has no calligraphic inscriptions. “The work is one of the three
life-size paintings showing the ruler seated in a jewel-encrusted and enam-
eled chair throne” (Diba 1999: 181). Diba goes on further to state that,

In conformity with the function of a state image intended for public

display and designed to inspire a sense of awe in the viewer, Mihr
‘Ali depicted Fath ‘Ali Shah as impassive, rigidly posed, and ablaze
with jewels. The image epitomizes poetic descriptions of the rulers’
imperial aura and sunlike splendor, to which the sun-shaped roundel
surmounting the throne back alludes. (Diba 1998: 183)

In addition to the throne, the crown, the sword and the royal armbands
symbolize his royal nature. Notice that in all these portraits of Fath ‘Ali
114 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Shah, he is invariably depicted looking to the front with a slight tilt to the
left. See also figure 52 printed in the previous chapter for an example of
this kind of sitting pose. Diba’s book is the best source to see fine exam-
ples of sitters depicted in the standing pose.
In the following section, I will analyze the objects held by the sitters in
Persian miniature painting and Qajar portrait painting. I want to explore if
there is a difference in the objects held by women and men. When analyz-
ing nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photographs, we can find several
recurrent elements, such as the man holding a flower, as one of the more
particular ones. The fact that the man is holding a flower is quite an un-
known and bizarre element in Western portraiture. Flowers tend to be
something more related to women than men, especially in that genre. But
not in the Persian painting tradition as we shall see. It is actually quite easy
to find portraits of men holding roses in various periods. A typical example
among the many to be found is Youth with Flower (fig. 88) from the seven-
teenth century, a precisely drawn representation of a courtier or a dandy,
which may have been a sketch for a larger painting. Iran often has been
called “the land of the rose and the nightingale”. Persian Sufi poets have
used the rose extensively, almost obsessively. The symbol of the rose con-
veys allusions to concepts such as beauty, love, poetry, divine Unity, music
and belovedness, while the nightingale symbolizes multiplicity and
diversity.
Another interesting element is water, normally presented by way of a
pond. See, for example, fig. 89, where a messenger offers to Sam (grand-
father of Rustam) a painted picture of the new-born Rustam, seated cross-
legged and garbed in a miniature version of his grandfather’s clothing.6
This kind of miniatures with a pond placed in the bottom center of the im-
age is very common and this kind of composition later on would also be
used in photography, as we shall see below. Remarkably, and especially in
photography, water has a close relationship to reflection and mirrors.
Photography is often compared with a mirror in theories of photography.
The motif of the mirror is one of the most fascinating ones used in Persian
poetry, especially in mystical thinking. The meaning of the mirror in
Persian literature has been analyzed in-depth by Johann Christoph Bürgel
and Priscilla Soucek. Rumi is one of the Persian poets who has used the
motif of the mirror more in his poetry. Annemarie Schimmel7 and Eva de
Vitray-Meyerovitch8 have investigated the role of the mirror in the imagery
of this poet.
There are, to be sure, many more motifs that bear a symbolic meaning
in Persian miniature painting, but I have only referred to the two that are
to be found in nineteenth-century Iranian portrait photography.
If we now consider Qajar portrait painting, the Qajar imperial attire and
regalia consist of several key elements that can be easily identified. These
elements have a uniquely Qajar flavor to them during Fath ‘Ali Shah’s
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 115

reign. As we can see in figures 62, 63, 64, 86, and 87 they include crown,
throne, sword, mace, dagger and jewels. The Qajar throne was also an es-
sential element of Fath ‘Ali Shah’s imperial regalia. Crown and throne
aside, as they are obviously the most symbolic of all the regalia, we can
say that in general the arrangement and collection of elements chosen by
Fath ‘Ali Shah and his predecessor, Aqa Mohammad Khān Qajar (1742-
1797), as part of their imperial image is important. In the words of the
Iranian scholar Manoutchehr M. Eskandari-Qajar,

each element is, of course, symbolic, and each element works to

complete the image that is to be projected. It is in the particular ar-
rangement of the elements that Fath ‘Ali Shah also achieved the un-
ique look of Qajar imperial attire and regalia. (Eskandari-Qajar
2003: 84)

In addition to the above, a mace (gorz), a jeweled dagger, a studded belt

with pendant and the Qajar hanging belt form the characteristic elements
of Fath ‘Ali Shah’s regalia, as we have seen in the group of painted por-
traits presented. The sword and the mace remind us of the ruler’s justice
and the regalia and decoration reinforce an image of wealth. Some of these
objects also became part of the regalia shown in photographic portraits in a
later stage, as in the case of the sword. In this sense, Qajar painting came
to influence the photographic portrait as far as the use of it was concerned,
next to the possible aesthetical influence that I am studying in this book.
Diba states that,

there is considerable evidence that images, in myriad forms, sizes,

and media, played an integral role in the nineteenth-century exercise
of power, both at home and abroad. In addition, numerous intri-
guing references document the widespread use of figurative imagery
in popular and court milieus throughout Qajar society for both reli-
gious and secular purposes. (Diba 1998: 31)

As remarked by Diba, the Islamic art historian B.W. Robinson’s statement,

“Persia in the nineteenth century was a land of paintings, as never before
or since” (Robinson 1964: 96) may be taken literally. She argues further
that,

Images in the form of mural paintings were embedded in the fabric

of structures located throughout the country. They included por-
traits; historical, literary and mythological themes; genre, hunting,
and battle scenes; and religious subjects. In fact, the entire Persian
domain functioned as a lavish stage for images designed to convey
the pageantry and splendour of Qajar rule. (Diba 1998: 31-32)
116 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

In the same line of thought as Diba, Falk argues that,

the character of Qajar paintings is largely embodied in the subjects

that were chosen. These must have always depended upon the
choice made by the patron and, understandably, one of the first in-
terests of a patron is himself, a fact amply illustrated by the greatest
patron of Qajar painting, Fath`Ali Shah (1798-1834) (Falk 1972:
10).

One may wonder wether this construction of a royal Persian image in

painting would have found its way also in other visual media such as
photography. Ekhtiar reflects precisely on this interesting topic arguing
that,

Members of the Qajar ruling elite soon realized that lithograph por-
traits and photographs of royal personages and the nobility were
capable of serving the same purpose that life-size paintings had ful-
filled earlier and began to regard lithographic portraits as a more ef-
ficient and economical vehicle for disseminating the royal image.
(Ehktiar 1998: 62)

Women in painting
Most of the portraits painted by artists during the Qajar Era were of men.
Nevertheless, there are enough portraits of women to deserve a close ana-
lysis.9 It is relevant for my study to analyze the pose of the women
depicted in these paintings to see if there is any relationship between the
pose and gesture of women in the Persian painting tradition and in nine-
teenth-century Iranian portrait photography. In all periods of history the
prescriptions for the physical behavior of women have been different from
those of men. This has been reflected clearly in Qajar portrait painting and
also in photography, as we shall see shortly. According to the art historian
S.J. Falk, “this subject, girls, apparently resulted from a desire for decora-
tion that would suit the purpose of the building for which the painting was
intended” (Falk 1972: 10). We can find images of women playing different
instruments, dancing with castanets, and sometimes just resting or drink-
ing. But without a doubt, the most impressive group of pictures is that
which depicts female acrobats and tumblers who played a prominent role
in the entertainment provided at court. These images provide the most
striking images from the Persian painter’s repertoire of females. Girls bal-
ancing on their hands and even on knives are especially interesting since
those contortions of the human body have no precursors in earlier painting.
A girl playing a sitar (fig. 90) by the painter Mohammad Sādiq and dated
1769-70 depicts a woman playing a sitar. As stated by Diba,
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 117

the arched eyebrows, aquiline nose, narrow kohl-rimmed eyes, elon-

gated body proportions, and stiff treatment of the wide trousers
were typical elements used in this idealized representations of wo-
men. Those were, actually, the Zand painting canons. (Diba 1998:
157)

The lady’s countenance and body correspond, indeed, to the classical ca-
nons of Persian beauty as interpreted in the Zand period: moon-faced
visage, joined eyebrows, etc. The woman depicted here is dressed in the
costume of the period, which so often consisted of huge patterned trousers
made of thick carpet-like material, and a much lighter transparent chemise
that was often open at the front. According to Diba,

the role and status of women entertainers in Middle East societies is

a perplexing phenomenon. Performing, especially in front of men,
was not regarded as a highly respectable profession, although its
practitioners were not necessarily considered outcasts. (Diba 1998:
207)

These women performers in painting were also a favourite topic in other

Middle Eastern countries and in North Africa. Sarah Graham-Brown ex-
plains that,

in many instances women entertainers were professionals brought

into the harem to perform on special occasions, or sometimes they
were actual members of the harem, usually concubines of the rulers,
who were trained in the arts of singing, music, poetry and dancing.
(Graham-Brown 1988: 174)

Ehktiar informs us that “the half-filled crystal decanter and porcelain table-
ware filled with piping-hot delicacies typically appear in representations of
women during this period” (Ehktiar 1998: 207). As she explains further,
the wine and apples are both attributes that act as visual equivalents for
poetic metaphors: in Persian culture, apples represent love and fruitfulness,
while wine is a favored metaphor for earthly and divine love. In A woman
balancing on a knife (fig. 73, see full color section) the acrobat’s body is
flattened against the picture plane, achieving impossible acrobatic poses in
search of a harmonic balance. The watermelon in the right bottom corner
of the painting gives the final image an interesting balance in composition.
The wooden balustrade is also one of the typical elements found in these
kinds of paintings as part of the studio setting. As is usual for Qajar paint-
ings of beauties, the picture is neither signed nor dated (there is one word:
Khātun, which means dame or lady), but its style and the young woman’s
clothes belong to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Note that the
118 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

women depicted on these paintings are always barefoot and their feet have
been painted with henna. Like many other Qajar canvases showing women,
this one seems to be one of a series of paintings that once decorated a pa-
lace. Diba argues,

although Qajar representations of women were rarely signed or da-

ted (in clear contrast to those of men), these paintings present
marked affinities with similar subjects executed by the painters
Ahmad and Muhammad, providing a dating range from the late
1820s to the early 1840s. (Diba 1998: 211)

Such paintings of women were displayed in the public as well as private

quarters of palaces and residences. Diba states further that,

These representations, in a society where women were secluded

from the male gaze, understandably puzzled nineteenth-century
European observers, who failed to grasp the abstract nature of these
representations and mistook them for actual portraits. (Diba 1998:
211)

These female acrobats are not found in photography but the women musi-
cians, especially playing the sitar are more common, as we will see in the
next section. The women depicted in Qajar paintings hold musical instru-
ments or, in some cases, little knives when performing some acrobatics, or
a glass of wine or bottle, as we can see in figures 73, see full color section,
and 90. These elements are also present in photographic portraits of wo-
men, as I shall show with some examples.
In sum, as we have seen, there is a chronological evolution from the tra-
ditional Iranian pose to a more westernized pose, chiefly symbolized by
the use of chairs in the painter’s studio and, later, in the photographer’s
studio. The plane of the painting rises from a low one to an upper one to
fully depict the person sitting on the chair. This transition happens over a
longer period of time in painting than in the case of photography. The first
chairs to be found in Qajar painting portraiture date from the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Before this date, only the kneeling pose can be
found. This traditional Persian pose widely used in miniature and Qajar
painting, can be described as a person kneeling on the floor, on a carpet,
and normally with a cushion at his/her back. The hands rest relaxed on the
sitter’s lap and quite often grapple some kind of typical object: tasbih (set
of coral prayer beads), mace (in the case that the person depicted is one of
the Qajar rulers), a book, a handkerchief, etc. Later on, after 1800, in Qajar
portrait painting, only men were sitting on chairs or on a throne, if the per-
son depicted is one of the Qajar rulers. Women were kneeling, standing or
performing acrobatics. A possible explanation of this difference is that in
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 119

the portraits of men, the sitters were real, belonging mostly to the highest
levels of court society, whereas those of women were idealized portraits of
anonymous women, more exactly of a prototype of women who were the
court’s entertainers. Around the same time, the standing pose can also be
found, but is not as widely used as the sitting pose. There is clearly a dif-
ferent treatment of female and male portraits. Gesture reflects differences
of gender as well as of class. Women portraits in the Qajar era were ab-
stractions that represented anonymous women whereas those of men were
always high-ranking society members that could be identified by the calli-
graphic inscription that is always found within the pictorial space. This
conclusion agrees with the statement of the Iranian scholar Afsaneh
Najmabadi that,

the subject of women in Qajar painting present us with a curious

picture: we have an abundance of representations of women from
the realm of male fantasy and pleasure, but very few representations
of real women. (Najmabadi 1998: 76)

The analysis of the objects held by the sitter are rich in sociological input.
While Persian miniature painting, due to its direct relation and dependence
on Persian literature, is more prone to use elements that bear symbolic
meaning, Qajar traditional portrait painting, as well as photographs, are
more directed to stress the social status and power of the sitters. This con-
sideration has a great impact on the treatment of the object held by the sit-
ter. There is a clear difference between the objects held by men and
women. Objects held by men are more related to the outer appearance of
the sitter, more related to the public sphere of society, while the ones held
by women are more related to the domestic sphere, a place governed by
women. However in either case, through the objects held by the sitters,
both photographers and sitters constructed their photographs showing a
part of the reality of their life, what they were interested in and where they
were coming from or their social status, as we shall see with examples in
the next section.

3.3 Pose and objects held by the sitter in nineteenth-

century Iranian portrait photography

In this section I explore which poses are used and which objects are held
by the sitters present in traditional Persian paintings that may have been in-
herited by nineteenth-century Iranian studio portrait photography.
Subsequently, I will discuss how Western aesthetics and studio parapherna-
lia have influenced the traditional pose of Iranian sitters in portrait studio
photography. Due to this influence some hybrid poses may be found
among Iranian photographs and my aim is to define them.The last topic
120 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

that I research in this section is whether there is a difference in the poses

used by men and women in photography, as was the case in Persian
painting.
The two first photographs considered here share an almost identical
pose: a man sitting on his heels with his knees resting on the floor
(Hewes’ posture 103), the typical Persian pose, with the hands almost in
the same position, one of them holding an object: in fig. 75 the mullah (re-
ligious priest or leader) holding a tasbih (a set of coral prayer beads), as in
traditional Persian painting (see figure 53, see full color section). The other
hand rests on his lap. In fig. 55, the man is holding a water pipe with the
right hand and his left hand rests in his lap in the same way as in the pre-
vious photograph. The parallel between the composition and aesthetics of
these photographs and the paintings analyzed in the previous section is re-
markable and leaves little doubt as to the influence of the paintings on the
photographs. We can also find a remarkable amount of photographs of
groups of people kneeling on the floor, like groups of musicians or jesters
(see figs. 91 and 92). The first one depicts three men with one serpent and
the calligraphic inscription at the center reveals them as a luti bāshi10 and
two mārgirs (trainers of serpents). Next to this information the date appears
on which the photograph was taken. The inscription on the right reveals
the place where the photograph was taken (Akkāskhāne-ye Mobārake-ye
Madrase-ye Majsus Nezām) and the inscription on the left reveals the name
of the photographer (Dār al-Khalāfe-ye Nāseri Khān Ezzat Mohammad
Hasan-e Qajar) as Mohammad Hassan Qajar. In the second image, a group
of four musicians is depicted in front of the well-known Rezā
Akkāsbāshi’s backdrop with the Victorian house printed on it. Actually, all
photographs by Rezā Akkāsbāshi are immediately recognizable by this
backdrop and since the sitters are always Iranians, an odd and intriguing
decontextualization of the subject with the atmosphere is also immediately
noticeable. The inscription reveals the men as a group of musicians from
Kashmir (the second part of the inscription is illegible). Notice that in this
kind of images, the viewpoint of the photographer is also lower than nor-
mal. This points to the fact that the photographer could be kneeling also
(or at least bending) on the floor and the camera would be much closer to
the floor than when taking photographs of people standing up, such as in
the next photograph (fig. 93), in which the Iranian photographer Ya’qub
Akkāsbāshi from Tabriz is depicted, and we can notice that the level of his
camera is much lower than the common one. Going back to the kneeling
pose, sitting on the heels with the knees resting on the floor is also to be
found in nineteenth-century photography in other countries in Asia, like in
Japan (see figures 80 and 83 from the previous chapter) and India.
The four photographs that I have just discussed are only a few examples
of the many of this kind to be found in nineteenth-century Iranian photo-
graphy. We can also find many examples of photographs in which the
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 121

person depicted is sitting on a chair. I would say that this change in pose is
more a fashion in the photo studio, a direct influence of Western aesthetics,
rather than a mirror of the social reality of the time. The uncomfortable
and non-relaxed manner of several Iranian sitters shown in the photographs
(see, for example, fig 94, where Anis al-Dowle, Nāser al-Din Shah’s favor-
ite, is depicted), seems to reinforce my hypothesis that the chair found its
way into the Iranian studio earlier than into Iranian daily life (I will come
back to this photograph later on in this section for further analysis). We
can also see this in fig. 76, by Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri. This photograph
was already analyzed in-depth in the previous chapter, especially regarding
the inscriptions that are present on the emulsive surface of the photograph.
Here the sitter is a mullah and is depicted seated in a chair in a photograph
that is entirely reminiscent of the aesthetics and composition of Victorian
studio photographs, in a rigid pose that contrasts with the more relaxed
pose that we have seen in other images such as figures 55 and 75. The next
portrait (fig. 95), taken by Rezā Akkāsbāshi, depicts a young man in the
typical pose of the Qajar portraits of men holding a sword, sitting on a
chair with a very self-conscious look, as was the case in the late Qajar por-
trait paintings of his ancestors. Actually the jeweled dagger, the studded
belt with pendant and the Qajar hanging belt are all regalia and clothing
present in the Qajar painting portraits as well. These are elements clearly
inherited from the Qajar portraiture tradition and many such photographic
portraits can be found (compare this portrait with figure 87). Notice the
self-conscious look on the face of the young man, the raised eyebrow re-
sulting in a quite proud pose. The calligraphic inscription below the por-
trait reveals the identity of the sitter as Jamin al-Dawle. As we have al-
ready seen in the previous section, Fath ‘Ali Shah was responsible for the
aesthetics and regalia used in Qajar painting portraiture and Nāser al-Din
Shah played the same role but in the new medium of photography. He tried
to show his power and that of his country through the photographs that
were taken mostly by court photographers of him and his family. The
photograph that we have just seen is a good example of this kind of court
portraiture and we can see that it has a flavor of those kind of portraits
painted in Fath Ali Shah’s time. The sword and the conscious pose are two
of the elements inherited from that painting tradition. Another good exam-
ple is a hand-colored photograph of Nāser al-Din Shah (fig. 96, see full
color section) taken and painted by the Italian photographer Luigi
Montabone (d. 1877). He is wearing an astrakhan hat with a slanted top ty-
pical of the mid-Qajar period, decorated with the royal aigrette (jeqqe) and
the clothes and especially the jewelry have been made obvious with the
help of the colors. This image is a good example to illustrate the fact that
the propagation of the Persian Royal Image was canalized not only by
Iranian photographers working at court, but also by non-Iranian photogra-
phers related to the court.
122 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

So these portraits display both elements from the Western portraiture tra-
dition in photography (i.e. the Victorian model) and elements inherited
from Qajar painting, resulting in what we can name a hybrid pose. The
term hybrid gesticulation or pose, as the scholar David Efron has pointed
out,

is used when the same individual may, if simultaneously exposed

over a period of time to two or more gesturally different groups,
adopt and combine certain gestural traits of both. (Efron 1972: 160)

So, a person that has been living for a long time in a foreign country and,
therefore, has been exposed to different cultures, after some time will adopt
some of the gestural and postural traits of her/his country of adoption and
they will be present next to other poses and gestures typical of her/his own
culture. The more different these two cultures would be, the more peculiar
hybrid poses may appear. I would like to add that the fact that new furni-
ture imported from the West is introduced into the lives, and into the photo
studios, of people in so-called non-Western countries will lead to the ap-
pearance of new poses that will often be hybrid poses themselves. A very
striking example is that of a person sitting on his heels or knees on a chair
using the surface of the chair as if it were the floor. The pose is exactly the
same, but the space where it appears has changed. Another peculiar exam-
ple is that of climbing, squatting or kneeling on other pieces of studio fur-
niture, like a balustrade or a column. In fig. 97, we can see a child who is
sitting in a deep squat pose on a balustrade, in what seems to be a recrea-
tional reaction of the sitter to the absurd studio paraphernalia which seems
to stress, even more, the absurdity of such imported studio furniture. Fig.
98 is also interesting, since most probably the photographer placed the
flowerpot on the chair giving the chair a new use that was not originally
intended by Europeans when they introduced the chair in the studio. Also
in the work of European photographers active in Iran in the nineteenth cen-
tury, we can track these kinds of hybrid images, like the photograph taken
by the Italian photographer Montabone where the child is sitting on a chair
but in a kneeling pose (fig. 99).
When we compare the photographs where the Iranian sitter is kneeling
with those where the sitter is sitting, we can appreciate that the person de-
picted seems more relaxed in the ones with the traditional pose, resulting
in a more natural pose. It appears to me that in the kneeling pose the hands
of the sitter are more natural than when s/he is sitting on a chair or stand-
ing up. When they are sitting, the pose is very rigid: the legs lay heavy,
one next to the other (no crossing of legs) and the hands lie quite still on
each leg. Nevertheless, we can also find other kinds of hand poses, a direct
influence of the typical portrait of the French photographer Nadar (1820-
1910): one hand is placed under the jacket of the sitter giving him,
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 123

somehow, a respectable appearance. In many photographs taken by Nāser

al-Din Shah, this kind of pose is used. There is a parallel indigenous pose
for the hands, also widely used in miniature painting and Qajar portraiture,
in which one of them is placed under the belt.
In the following, I investigate if there are common elements used both
in the Persian painting tradition and in nineteenth-century photography. I
also study possible differences between the objects held by men and the
objects held by women in photography as I have already done with paint-
ing in the previous section.
Flowers being held by men are a recurrent element to be found in nine-
teenth-century Iranian portrait photography. There are two kinds of portrait
photographs that depict men holding flowers. The first are ordinary men
holding flowers (see figs. 100 and 101), the second are mullahs or religious
men (see fig. 102). In this kind of photographs the mullahs are normaly
the ones who hold flowers in their hands, whereas the servants who are
standing do not.
There is a third kind of image where men are depicted not holding the
flowers but wearing them as part of their outfit! These men were jesters.
Nāser al-Din Shah was fond of the company of jesters11 and there are
many photographs of them in the Golestān Palace Library Photo-Archive.
Many of these images depict jesters with funny, often ridiculous, ornamen-
tal elements that reveal their role as entertainers in Nāser al-Din Shah’s
court. Abd al-Qāsem Ghaffāri was a well-known jester at that time, whose
head and shoulders are wrapped in flowers (see fig. 103). It seems that to
decorate jesters with flowers was a favorite game among the Shah and his
courtiers. Another image on this theme is the one that depicts Āghā
Mohammad Khāje, eunuch of Nāser al-Din Shah’s court and better known
as Faqir al-Ghameh (see fig. 104). This image has more interesting ele-
ments in it. The first is the backdrop (it is the same, by the way, that was
used in the previous photograph) that is clearly noticeable, the elegant
chair that contrasts with the tile floor and the jester depicted on the photo-
graph, who shows a contented pose and who wears quite a weird outfit.
This seems to be a topic that was of interest only to Nāser al-Din Shah but
that has no further connection to painting.
Many photographs of groups are organized around a small pond (e.g.,
figures 105 and 106). The use and function of those pools in photography
may be related to their use and function in poetry and could then be ex-
plained by Schimmel’s statement that

there are very few verses in the poetry of the greatest masters of
Urdu, Turkish and Persian poetry that do not reflect the religious
background of Islamic culture; it is, like the pools in the courtyards
of the mosques, in which the grandeur of the huge building is mir-
rored, its beauty enhanced by the strange effects of tiny waves of
124 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

verdure springing forth from the shallow water. (Schimmel 1975:

288)

This metaphoric element is probably well rooted in the Iranians’ subcon-

scious, with poetry and its images being so important to Iranians even to-
day that its presence in photography as well could be easily understood.
Another interesting and recurrent element are pots of flowers in nine-
teenth-century photography, especially in Shiraz, in the studio parapherna-
lia, both outdoors and indoors. Shiraz, city of roses and nightingales, is an
important city for poetry since some of the greatest Persian poets (such as
Hafiz and Saadi) are buried there and their tombs have become shrines for
Iranians. I find a stronger connection between miniature painting and
photography in Shiraz, and therefore also between poetry and photography,
than in other parts of Iran. The reason may be the special place of Shiraz
in the Persian poetic tradition. We can see this in many images, such as the
one presented here (fig. 107). In this photograph we can see a group of
men, both religious and secular, kneeling, sitting or standing surrounded
by many pots of flowers that are present even within the window frame
next to two of the men depicted. The Iranian photographer from Shiraz
Mirzā Habibollah Chehrehnegār (1896-1942), who was fond of using flow-
ers and pots of flowers in his compositions, took this photograph. He was
a son of Mirzā Fatollah Chehrehnegār (1877-1932).12 We already saw a
photograph that depicts a child and a pot of flowers placed on the chair as
part of the studio paraphernalia resulting in an interesting and different im-
age (fig. 98). We will see further examples of this in chapter 5.
A recurrent element to be found in many photographs is the water pipe,
which was simply a logical presence, being such an important part of
Iranian daily life at that time. Other elements to be found with no other
purpose than to give information about the person depicted are tasbih or
books such as the Koran or of beloved poets. Some give us information
about the person depicted through the pose and gesture without needing
objects, like fig. 108, where a young man is depicted in the pose of the
Muslim prayer, with hands opening up to the sky. Notice the small prayer
carpet on the bottom left and the two books (most probably one Koran at
least) and the Shi’a Muslim prayer’s stone.

Women in photography
The topic of women is an interesting one and deserves some close attention
and analysis. There is an interesting example to analyze, a full page of one
of Nāser al-Din Shah’s albums hosted in Golestān Palace Library, fig. 109.
On this page we can see five photographs, all of them taken by Nāser al-
Din Shah himself, as well as some texts written under each image. The
way that the photographs are arranged is quite interesting and gives us
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 125

information about the structure and hierarchy of the imperial andarun or

harem, in this case, Nāser al-Din Shah’s harem and extensive family. In the
center of the page a photograph of himself is placed, sitting on a chair and
under it the text reads “my face”. Circling this photograph, we can see
three photographs of some of his wives: the one on the left side of the page
is Turani, photographed ten days after her wedding, as we can read in the
text written under the image; the photograph on the right side of the page
depicts two women sitting on a bench, Bimesāl Khānum and Bigam
Khānum as the text under them reveals. Under the frame of the page, we
can also read that Nāser al-Din Shah has written, “my face at 51”; and
there is more text that is illegible, at least for me. The last photograph is
the one placed in the upper part of the page in which the eunuch Agha
Mohammad Khājeh is depicted. It has been pasted into the album in a very
strange way, the man rotated 90º to the left. The reason for doing so is un-
clear to me at the moment; perhaps it is because it was the only way to fit
this portrait on the page. Note that the poses of all the women are rather
unnatural, sitting on chairs with legs crossed at the ankles, a pose that re-
minds us of those used when they sit cross-legged on the floor. It is also
interesting to observe the way the hands are placed: the one on the right
shows the woman with a hand placed on her heart (this means, according
to the American scholar Carol M. Sparhawk in her article Contrastive-
Identification Feature of Persian Gesture13, “your servant”. It is a widely
used gesture among Iranians still today.) The other two photographs show
the women with a pose that Nadar popularized, that of placing one hand
on the chest under the jacket or shirt. On this single page, we can find an
indigenous pose as well as a Western one. Note the dress of the women.
As with court fashions in men’s clothing, women’s dress changed some-
times rather dramatically as the layers of long trousers shortened to a series
of skirts, as noted by C.J. Wills, who worked in Persia from 1866 to 1881
as a doctor attached to the telegraph offices at Hamadan, Isfahan and
Shiraz:

Their feet and legs were bare; their skirts were bouffes by a number
of under-skirts such as are usually worn by the ballet on our opera-
tic stage; but instead of these undergarments being white and gauzy,
they were of silk and of all colors (Wills 1891: 50).

When taking into consideration the portrait photographs of women, we can

immediately identify some elements borrowed from Qajar portraiture, not
only in the pose of the woman depicted but also in the objects that she is
holding. There are not many photographs of women to be found, when
compared to the legacy of male portraiture photography that has reached
our hands. Nāser al-Din Shah took photographs of most of his wives, most
of them in formal poses, but also we can find others in more intimate
126 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

poses. Since his photography was only meant to be seen by himself, it is

of great interest, from both a historical and an aesthetic point of view. The
existence of these photographs provides an interesting bridge between the
perception and the reality of harems and that of Nāser al-Din Shah in parti-
cular. But what is especially revealing and important to point out is that
this reality, like those of the Orientalist painters and photographers, is
maybe staged too. Nevertheless, the actors are real and the photographer is
himself the master of the harem. The reality depicted is a staged reality for
the purpose of that picture alone and for the pleasure of the photographer
alone. Not many of these images have been printed, but one of them is
especially appealing as far as the pose is concerned: that of Anis al-Dowle,
one of his favorites, in the reclining odalisque-like pose (fig. 94). This re-
clining pose, very much favored by Orientalist painters, is used here by
Nāser al-Din Shah in the form of some kind of astonishing mirror repre-
sentation in which this native photographer seems to represent his own
people in the way that the Westerners perceive them.14 This phenomenon
has been named “self-orientalizing” by the Iranian scholar ‘Ali Behdad,
who says “it is the practice of seeing and representing oneself as Europe’s
Other” (Behdad 2001: 148). Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind
that the photographs of women analyzed here were taken exclusively by
Nāser al-Din Shah. In this sense, I disagree with Behdad’s conclusion
further in his paper regarding this topic. He states that,

there is an “indigenous” tradition of photography in Iran, but this

tradition, as I will discuss later, is not organic. By this I mean, it is
indebted to, and mimetic of, Orientalism’s aesthetic values and ideo-
logical assumptions more than to its Iranian and Islamic traditions.
(Behdad 2001: 145)

This may be so when analyzing the work of Nāser al-Din Shah (and only
in a couple of ambiguous photographs), but it is not so clear when taking
into consideration the work of other court photographers or bazaar photo-
graphers who were more exposed to their Iranian visual traditions.
I have never seen printed images of fully naked Iranian women taken by
Iranian photographers in books, but I have found in different books several
printed photographs of women with transparent blouses that clearly reveal
their breasts and bellies. Most of these images of women present a hybrid
approach, usually represented by the chair in which she is sitting. In clear
contrast to this, in all of the Qajar portrait paintings that I have studied, the
women are either kneeling on the floor or standing. I have not found any
chairs in those paintings. See, for instance, fig. 110, which is actually an
album page where two photographs of women have been placed together.
The two women are wives of Nāser al-Din Shah whom he photographed
himself. I have seen many of these images of his wives that are placed in
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 127

different albums kept at the Golestān Palace Library. All the women sit in
the same richly carved rococo wooden chair and are photographed in ex-
actly the same way, frontally and hieraticly. Often the feet are cut out, as in
these two photographs, and there is not too much space above their heads.
The woman sitting on the left is holding a sitar and reminds us of the typi-
cal Qajar painting portraits of women playing instruments (see fig. 90). In
the photograph next to the previous one, the woman is depicted with a
transparent blouse that clearly reveals her breasts and her belly (see the
woman on the right side of fig. 110). This kind of chemise is the same
style as the ones used in some Qajar painting portraits (see fig. 90), but the
long thick trousers have been changed by the tutu that became fashionable
in Nāser al-Din Shah’s harem at a later stage. As stated by Najmabadi,

a figure that appears repeatedly in Qajar art is the bare-breasted wo-

man. Allthough nude females as well as females whose breasts are
visible through sheer clothing do appear in Safavid and Zand art,
the bare-breasted woman, or woman with breasts emphatically dis-
played through style of dress or association with fetishistic objects,
seem to be a heavily accented theme in Qajar painting. (Najmabadi
1998: 77)

One interesting detail is that in all the photographs of women that I have
found, they always wear socks and shoes, whereas in the paintings the
women are barefoot and the soles of their feet are painted with henna.
Notice that the normally joined eyebrows that many of the women were
fond of in this case presents a variant that shows two thick and long eye-
brows with a black painted point between them. This might be a special
fashion, but I have no factual information regarding this. Above both
photographs there are two calligraphic inscriptions that reveal the identity
of the women: Fateme Sultān Tārchi (Fatimeh The Tar Player) on the left
and Zahrā Sultān on the right. When the woman depicted passed away,
there was always a calligraphic inscription on the left side of her image
that recorded this fact: mord, the Persian word for dead.
When women are holding objects, these are usually musical instruments.
I have not found women holding books or religious objects (which does
not mean that they do not exist! I have just not found them to date). I have
not found photographs of women holding flowers either!
The Western photographer’s representation of Iranian women was quite
different from the Iranian one. It is interesting that the German photogra-
pher Ernst Hoeltzer (1855-1939) was concerned about offering an image of
Iran based on real life, on observation from daily life; many of the photo-
graphs he staged in his studio involve images in which the people sit on
the floor while eating, singing or playing instruments. A good example is
the portrait of a group of women eating (fig. 111). (Notice that in this case
128 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

the plane of the photographer has been lowered as well.) At the other end
of the spectrum, we find the commercial (and very talented) photographer
from Tiflis, Antoin Sevruguin (late 1830s-1933), who stressed the exotic
side of this culture (but who also produced a remarkable corpus of photo-
graphs with an ethnographical approach), with images like fig. 112, which
is kept at the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden. Next to the photograph
there is a caption: Persian toilet. Also taken by Sevruguin is the portrait of
an Iranian woman (fig. 113), depicted naked with her hand resting on a
chair. These kinds of images of Middle Eastern women were quite usual in
the second half of the nineteenth century and were especially constructed
by Western photographers. The women who posed for such images were
normally prostitutes, as the Algerian writer Malek Alloula states in The
Colonial Harem. Referring to photography in North Africa he explains that

the photographer used paid models that he recruited almost exclu-

sively on the margins of the society in which loss of social position,
in the wake of the conquest and the subsequent overturning of tradi-
tional structures, affects men as well as women (invariably propel-
ling the latter toward prostitution). (Alloula 1986: 17)

Graham-Brown maintains that,

many of these images of women, which hardened into clichés, were

drawn from a pre-existing repertoire of themes already established
by a genre of Orientalist painting which had developed, particularly
in France and Germany, from the first half of the nineteenth century.
(Graham-Brown 1988: 40)

Graham-Brown states further that,

in subject matter and construction, albeit not in aesthetic intention,

it might be argued that Orientalist painting had a considerable influ-
ence on nineteenth-century studio photography of the Middle East.
(Graham-Brown 1988: 40)

I will return to this and investigate this topic more in-depth in chapter 5
concerned with Western influences on nineteenth-century Iranian photogra-
phy. A few examples from Iranian and Western photographers have shown
us that it often happens that the analysis of images from the nineteenth
century reveals more about the state of mind of the photographers in parti-
cular and society in general (biased perception of reality and the conse-
quent biased representation of that reality, both by Western and Iranian
photographers) than the objective reality of the social mesh or the photo-
graphs and the people represented on them.
POSE, GESTURE AND OBJECTS HELD BY THE SITTER 129

To summarize, in this chapter I have investigated photographs and paint-

ings through one of their cultural components: the pose of the sitter and, as
a part of the pose, the objects s/he holds. The analysis of the pose of the
sitter revealed once again a cultural conditioning in the process of taking
and producing photographs. Both the photographer and the sitter con-
structed photographs conditioned by the image that they wanted to give of
themselves and they achieve that through the use of particular objects.
There is a clear influence of the pose used in the Persian painting tradi-
tion on the pose of nineteenth-century Iranian studio photography: the
kneeling pose, the cushion behind the sitter’s back, the pose of the hands,
the objects that the sitter is holding, etc. We can find the same evolutionary
phenomenon of the pose in the photographer’s studio as we found in the
painters’ studio: rising from the floor to the chair level. Of course, in the
case of photography, the process happens in a shorter period of time than
in the case of painting. The fact that the sitter leaves the floor to climb on
a chair seems to be an influence of the Western photo-studio’s mode.
There are hybrid poses to be found due to the double exposure of the sitter
and photographer to the traditional Persian culture and the (new) Western
influence. Such hybrid poses are found widely among Iranian photogra-
phers. The photographs of women were mostly taken by Nāser al-Din
Shah and present them in a respectful mode, all sitting on highly decorated
and elaborated chairs. Therefore, the influence of the Western sitting pose
is especially interesting in the case of photographs of women and contrasts
with the lack of chairs in Qajar painting portraiture of women. Indeed, the
pose not only was used to stress social status, but also to express fantasy
and ideals as well. The portrait of the women in painting in an idealized
form is a clear indication of this claim. Portraits of men are in a more stern
and serious pose than those of the women, who are posed in more inclined,
and fanciful, or even in dancing or acrobatic poses. This hints at a bitter
truth that men were real while women mostly were anonymous or even
none-existing.
As far as the objects are concerned, the traditionally depicted objects on
Persian miniature painting and Qajar portraiture (tasbih, flowers, water
pipe, swords, cushion, etc) are also to be found in nineteenth-century
Iranian photography. The women would normally hold musical instruments
and the men religious objects, swords, flowers or water pipes.

Notes

1 Duchenne was a physician at the Paris hospital La Salpetriére and treated people suffering
from epilepsy, neurological problems and insanity. His Mécanisme de la physionomie hu-
maine (The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy), published in 1862, was accompanied
by an atlas with 84 photographs of human subjects whose facial muscles were stimulated
by electric currents.
130 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

2 His L’iconographie photographique de La Salpetrière (Photographic Iconography of the

Salpetrière Hospital) was a three-volume work that contained photographs of hysterics,
published in 1880.
3 See: Wylie, L. (1977), Beaux Gestes: A Guide to French Body Talk. Cambridge: The
Undergraduate Press; Monahan, B. (1983), A Dictionary of Russian Gestures. New
Jersey: Hermitage; Diadori, P. (1900), Senza Parole. 100 Gesti degli Italiani. Rome:
Bonacci.
4 See: Kendon 2004. Adam Kendom is a leading authority on the subject and is the editor
of the journal Gesture, an important referent to everybody interested in human
communication.
5 As remarked by Diba, this attribution was first proposed by Robinson 1967: 336.
6 This page is an illustration of a chapter of Ferdowsi’s Shāh-nāme. For an interesting ana-
lysis, see Sims 2002: 319.
7 Schimmel 1978.
8 De Vitray-Meyerovitch 1972.
9 For a good insight into this topic, see: Najmabadi, A. (1998), “Reading for Gender
through Qajar Painting”, in Diba 1998: 76-89.
10 Luti Bashi is a group of men that belong to a Zurkhāne, literally, the house of force.
Members of the Zurkhāne followed a strict code of conduct. Imam Ali, the cousin and
son-in-law of the Prophet, together with Rustam, the legendary pre-Islamic Iranian Hero,
were inspirational figures for its members.
11 For an interesting research about the role of jesters in Nāser al-Din Shah’s society, see:
Martin 2006.
12 An Iranian photographer born in Shiraz and member of a family of several generations of
photographers. The first photographer of this family was Mirzā Hassan Akkāsbashi
(1854-1916). For a very good selection of his photographs and other family members and
also biographical information, see: Sane 1990.
13 Sparhawk 1981: 449.
14 The word odalisque appears in a French form and originates from the Turkish odalik,
meaning “chambermaid”. During the nineteenth century odalisques became common fan-
tasy figures in Orientalist painting.
4 ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE

For Sandra Garabello and Ana Briongos

The function of “space” in Persian traditional painting, greatly influenced

by Persian mystic culture, may have lent itself to nineteenth-century
Iranian photography. I will devote this chapter to explore the understanding
of space in Persian painting and the influence that this may have had on
nineteenth-century Iranian photography, if at all. I will analyze the formal
use of space both in Persian miniature painting and photography. The main
research issues related to the arrangement of the space in Persian miniature
painting are topics such as the non-linear perspective approach or the iso-
metrical perspective (also called parallel perspective) to project a three-
dimensional space onto a two-dimensional picture plane; the existence of
multiple centers of attention (diffuse composition); the grid layout struc-
ture; and the vertical composition/vertical perspective. I will introduce the
kinds of compositions that can be defined on the basis of the arrangement
of the elements in the pictorial or photographic space, and explore the ones
that may be peculiar to nineteenth-century Iranian photography as influ-
enced by the Persian painting tradition.

4.1 Spatial characteristics of Persian miniature painting

Space is perceived, understood, represented and inhabited in different ways

in different cultures. This observation follows the same line of thought pre-
sented in the previous chapters of my book, and defends that artistic repre-
sentation and composition is culture conditioned.
As Helen Westgeest states in her book Zen in the Fifties. Interaction in
Art Between East and West, “Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945)1 described the
traditional Japanese way of suggesting space as follows: ‘The space in art
from the Far East is not the space facing the self, but the space in which
the self is situated’” (Westgeest 1998: 20). Further, she remarks that “the
Japanese artist Hajime Shimoyama confirmed this in an interview with the
comment that space for Western artists exists primarily in front of him,
whereas for the Japanese artist space surrounds him” (Westgeest 1998: 25).
This difference, says Westgeest,

would seem to be reflected in the terms observation with respect to

Western artists, and participation with respect to Japanese artists.
132 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

She remarks also that, in the words of the French scholar of cultural
geography Augustin Berque, the opposition between subject and ob-
ject, between self and non-self, appears only at a certain level, while
at another level both terms merge. The surroundings are, in his opi-
nion even more important than the subject, a phenomenon, which
he calls contextualism. He contrasts this with the Western approach,
which he defines as: “This culture less easily assimilates itself to
nature because, fundamentally, the subject’s spontaneous self-defini-
tion, or particularity, acts in opposition to the definition, or natural-
ness, of its environment’” (Westgeest 1998: 25).

The analysis that I will present here points to the fact that Iranians also per-
ceive space in a more active way, meaning here, that individuals become
part of the whole picture, the whole surrounding space. I will come back
to this later while analyzing photographs. The way that Iranian people are
presented in nineteenth-century photographs of big groups of people de-
picted next to buildings is quite peculiar: people invade the whole structure
of the building as we shall see later in this chapter, becoming part of the
building’s structure.
When looking at paintings and photographs made by artists from differ-
ent cultures, we realize that there is a different understanding of space, a
different treatment of photographic or pictorial space. If we take a repre-
sentative series of Persian book paintings from a particular school and ob-
serve them with analytical attention, then it is straightforward to conclude
that they obey certain conventions governing the depiction of space. The
art of Persian miniature painting is an interesting historical manifestation
of this fact. It is impossible to specify spatial characteristics, which are ap-
plicable to all Persian miniature paintings, since there are many different
schools with their own peculiarities. However, there are a number of recur-
ring aspects regarding the understanding of the space. To be sure, many of
these spatial conventions differ greatly from those followed in Western
painting, especially after the Italian Renaissance. In Western works since
the Renaissance, a clear composition with one center of attention domi-
nates, whereas in Oriental traditional miniature paintings (Indian, Iranian,
Chinese, etc.) we clearly find different centers of attention. That is the first
difference that we can notice and that is related to the grid structure of the
Oriental miniatures.
The second topic that I will take into consideration is the isometric per-
spective used in Persian miniature paintings (inherited most probably from
the Chinese) in contrast to the Western linear perspective. The latter issue
deals with vertical composition and vertical perspective. These spatial ele-
ments actually can be grouped in two clusters: the first one being con-
cerned with the fragmentation of the space into units (diffuse composition/
grid layout structure) and the second one being concerned with methods of
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 133

suggesting perspective. I will devote some time to each one of these three
sub-sections.

Diffuse and scanned compositions/grid layout structure

The French art historian Lucien Rudrauf has made a systematic study of
compositional patterns. This study is sixty years old, but I still find it ap-
plicable as far as the definitions are concerned. He distinguishes two fa-
milies of plastic composition: diffuse and scanned. However, I do not quite
agree with his idea that the scanned composition is more interesting (or de-
veloped) from an aesthetic point of view. He calls that type of composition
diffuse which, without being unrhythmic, does not follow any hierarchical
principle in the distribution of its elements. In Rudrauf’s words,

compositions of this kind are often made of a great number of de-

tails, none of which is marked with a predominant accent. The eye
is not guided to go from one object to another. Attention scatters it-
self without hindrance over all parts of the plane, with nothing to
lead it imperiously back to the center of radiation. Such pictures can
be freely cut up into sections capable of having an independent life.
Diffuse compositions ignore, intentionally or not, the effect of light-
ing which produces accents and contrasts incompatible with its nat-
ure. These kinds of compositions are often, if not always, freed
from the laws of perspective (of linear perspective, as I emphasize).
(Rudrauf 1949: 329)

The Persian miniature, as we shall see later in this chapter, offers typical
examples of such diffuse composition. In Occidental art this is an excep-
tional phenomenon, most often encountered in earlier epochs, before the
Italian Renaissance. But it does not disappear in the more evolved stage of
spatial realism. The Netherlandish painters Jerome Bosch (1453-1516) and
Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569) preferred it. In the words of
Rudrauf, “its theoretical interest lies, in part, in the position of its essential
characteristics in those of the other large class of plastic compositions:
scanned” (Rudrauf 1949: 329). Rudrauf calls that type of composition
scanned,

which spreads out before our eyes according to a spatial rhythm

which is strongly hierarchical, allowing principal and secondary ac-
cents, marked with variable strength but always clearly perceptible.
(Rudrauf 1949: 329)

In sum, there are two different kinds of composition, diffuse and scanned,
the first being relevant for my study since it is the one that is present in
134 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Persian miniature painting and also, as I shall show with examples,

achieved in nineteenth-century Iranian photography. Both mediums display
a composition that presents multiple centers of attention.
During an interview with Westgeest2, we viewed some Persian miniature
paintings and discussed the arrangement of the space in Persian miniatures
and its possible influence on nineteenth-century Iranian photographs. She
remarked on the resemblance of the formal structure of the miniatures and
that of the grid that became popular at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury in European art. The multiple centers of attention characteristic of
Persian miniatures are supported or framed by a structure that resembles
the grid layout structure, this late concept being a Western contemporary
concept. I will briefly introduce this concept to further analyze it in Persian
miniatures.
In the early part of the last century there began to appear in France and
shortly after in Russia and Holland a structure that has remained emble-
matic of the modernist ambition within the visual arts ever since. As art
critic Rosalind Krauss mentions, with the

surfacing [of] the pre-War cubist painting and [it] subsequently be-
coming even more stringent and manifest, the grid announces,
among other things, modern art’s will to silence its hostility to lit-
erature, to narrative, to discourse (Krauss 1979: 51).

Krauss continues that there are two ways in which the grid functions to de-
clare the modernity of modern art. One is spatial; the other is temporal.

In the spatial sense, the grid states the absolute autonomy of the
realm of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is anti-natural,
anti-mimetic, anti-real. It is what art looks like when it turns its back
on nature. In the flatness that results from its coordinates, the grid is
the means of crowding out the dimensions of the real and replacing
them with the lateral spread of a single surface. In the over-all regu-
larity of its organization, it is the result not of imitation, but of aes-
thetic decree. Insofar as its order is that of pure relationship, the grid
is a way of abrogating the claims of natural objects to have an order
particular to themselves; the relationships in the aesthetic field are
shown by the grid to be sui generis and, with respect to natural ob-
jects, to be both prior and final. The grid declares the space of art to
be at once autonomous and autotelic. In the temporal dimension, the
grid is an emblem of modernity by just being that: the form that is
ubiquitous in the art of our century, while appearing nowhere at all,
in the art of the last one. In that great set of chain reactions by
which modernism was born out of the efforts of the nineteenth cen-
tury, one final shift resulted in breaking the chain. By “discovering”
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 135

the grid, Cubism, De Stijl, Mondrian, Malevich, etc., landed in a

place that was out of reach of everything that went before. This is to
say, they landed in the present, and everything else was declared to
be the past (Krauss 1978: 3).

Krauss goes on to point out that,

one has to travel a long way back into the history of art to find pre-
vious examples of grids. One has to go to the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, to treatises on perspective and to those exquisite studies
by Ucello, Leonardo da Vinci or Dürer, where the perspective lattice
is inscribed in the depicted world as the armature of its organiza-
tion. But perspective studies are not really early instances of grids.
Perspective was, after all, regarded as the science of the real for a
long period of time, not the mode of withdrawal from it.
Perspective was the demonstration of the way reality and its repre-
sentation could be mapped onto one another, the way the painted
image and its real-world referent did in fact relate to one another –
the first being a form of knowledge about the second. Everything
about the grid opposes that relationship, cuts it off from the very be-
ginning. Unlike perspective, the grid does not map the space of a
room or a landscape or a group of figures onto the surface of a
painting. Indeed, if it maps anything, it maps the surface of the
painting itself. (Krauss 1978: 4)

The grid has played a central role in the development and consolidation of
the modern movement in twentieth-century graphic design, according to
the graphic designer historian Jack H. Williamson.3 His article “The Grid:
History, Use and Meaning”, is an interesting analysis of the evolution of
the grid in Western art. The article starts with the late medieval grid fol-
lowed by the Renaissance and Cartesian grids, then the modern grid and
finishes with the post-modern grid. In the words of Williamson,

for practical purposes, the process may be said to begin with Paul
Cézanne’s initial move away from Renaissance illusionism toward
the abstraction and geometricization of nature and an emphasis on
the flat field of the picture plane. This impulse continues through
the faceting of the picture plane by synthetic cubism to produce an
overall effect, and it peaks when Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) takes
up the pictorial grid of synthetic cubism to explore and purify it in
virtual isolation from other pictorial elements. Under cubism’s influ-
ence, Mondrian’s naturalistic subject matter became progressively
abstracted and continued to employ vertical and horizontal bars,
sometimes colored and usually not touching, on a white field. Often
136 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

these bars appear to continue off the edge of the canvas, suggesting
that the field extends infinitely in all directions although the viewer
sees only that portion visible within the “window” of the canvas.
(Williamson 1986: 22)

This is also the sensation that may be produced in the viewer by many
Persian miniatures, like the ones that will be analyzed here, since they all
share this sense that the scene goes on in all directions and off the page.
The grid shares, only structurally, the non-linear perspective approach of
the Persian miniature painting tradition and its characteristics of non-realis-
tic representation of the real world. There is an interesting corpus of litera-
ture on the “grid layout” for Persian miniatures, much of it determined by
the text. It is interesting to note that these authors do not use the term
“grid” to refer to this phenomenon. The grid structure that underlies every
miniature is made more obvious through the way in which architecture has
been used to divide space into blocks, as we will see with examples in the
next section. The first attempt to make a rigorous study of the grid layout
was done in the 1930s by co-authors Emmy Wellesz and Kurt
Blauensteiner, in “Illustrationen zur einer Geschichte Timurs”.4 They ar-
rived at interesting conclusions after analyzing a manuscript of the Zafar-
nāme5 dated 953 (1546) and designated as “The Praetorious Codex”. The
structural base of composition is best understood in the form of a diagram
that was done by these two authors after their study (fig. 114). The Islamic
art historian Grace Dunham Guest also did a classical and fundamental
study in the 1940s on the use of space and composition in Persian minia-
tures, “Shiraz Painting in the Sixteenth Century”.6 She conducted an in-
depth analysis of the “inner order” and excellence in composition found in
the miniatures of the manuscript volume of the Khamse of Nezāmi7 held at
the Freer and Sackler Gallery of Art in Washington. She explained that this
inner order is based on a mathematically-controlled plotting of the page de-
sign as a whole. She states that the complete Shiraz canon of proportion,
then, which evolved in the third decade of the sixteenth century appears in
the diagram illustrated in figure 115. Dunham explains that,

greater liberties were taken with the “canon” towards the end of the
[sixteenth] century when the “inner axes” were sometimes aban-
doned and the upright composition based on divisions of thirds
adopted. (figure 116) (Dunham 1949)

Another, more recent, fundamental study of the understanding of space in

Persian miniature painting was written in the 1970s by the Iranian archeol-
ogist and research director at the CNRS (Paris) Chahryar Adle, “Recherche
sur le module at le tracé correcteur dans la miniature orientale”.8 In this
study he thoroughly analyzes some miniatures and draws a schema of
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 137

designs for them, like the modular composition and “traces correcteurs”
(fig. 117) of the scene of Shah Abbās attacking the Uzbek army from
Fotuhāt-e Hamāyun, from the school of Shiraz. Note the position of the
hand of the man right in the center of the image, the vertical divisions of
the page in three vertical identical parts regulated by the length of the text.
This study illustrates precisely this peculiar understanding of the space in
Persian painting.

Linear perspective versus isometrical projection

Isometry (like linear perspective) is a graphic method to project three-
dimensional space on a two-dimensional picture plane. With an isometrical
perspective, the length and width of a cube are placed on the horizontal
line of projection with an angle of 30 degrees (see fig. 118).
The three dimensions of a cube are projected onto the picture plane
without optical distortion. Height, width and length are true to scale; they
are rendered in equal measures. To be more precise, measurements do not
change, but optically they distort: there are no 90º corners (squares become
rombus). This is different from linear perspective, in which edges that
recede from the viewer are drawn shorter to stimulate the optical effect of
things looking smaller in the distance. Because things do not get smaller in
the distance in isometrical perspective, parallel lines remain parallel. The
projection of three-dimensional space onto the two dimensional picture
plane is a problem that has roots far back in history. In Europe, the pro-
blem was tackled by Renaissance artists such as Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377-1446) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Journalist and expert
in Asian technology Jan Krikke notes that traditionally European art was
based on optical representation.9 This method of representing linear per-
spective dominated European art until it was challenged in the twentieth
century by the Cubists, who interpreted reality by juxtaposing several
viewpoints on a single canvas. The discovery of the vanishing point, which
means that the lines of projection meet at an imaginary point on the hori-
zon, resulted in linear perspective: a perspective that is achieved by reced-
ing to the vanishing point. Linear perspective tries to achieve visual rea-
lism in paintings of three-dimensional environments. But not only in
Europe a system to project space on the two-dimensional picture plane was
developed. In China, axonometry was developed, which unlike linear per-
spective is not based on optical principles. In axonometry there is no van-
ishing point and, therefore, no optical distortion (see fig. 119, an illustra-
tion of the difference between axonometry as it is used in Chinese painting
[left] and linear perspective).10
In Chinese and Japanese painting, we can find examples of building in-
teriors in which its structural elements, like pillars, will remain parallel as
they are in reality and their size and geometry remains constant, even if at
138 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

first sight observers may perceive them as divergent. The key features of
axonometry are its high vantage point and the parallel lines of projection
in the three principal directions: lines that are parallel in the three-dimen-
sional space remain parallel in the two dimensional picture, in contrast to
linear perspective in which lines along the z-axis in the three-dimensional
space collapse to a single vanishing point at the horizon in the two-dimen-
sional picture. Another characteristic of this kind of perspective is that ob-
jects that are distant have the same size as objects that are near; objects do
not get smaller as they move away from the viewer. Axonometry was in-
troduced to Europe in the seventeenth century by Jesuits returning from
China, Krikke mentions. This scholar continues,

however, the wider acceptance of axonometry had to wait until it

was given a mathematical foundation, by William Farish who pro-
vided axonometry with its geometrical basis. He formulated isome-
try, which means “equal measures” because the same scale is used
for height, width and depth. (Krikke 1996)

An interesting book by the German art historian Hans Belting, Florenz und
Bagdad. Eine westöstliche Geschichte des Blicks, offers a well documented
and argumentative study of the Arabic origins of the Western linear per-
spective in art and constitutes a comparative study of the way of looking
in the West and in the Islamic world. He shows differences and similitudes
between the way of looking and thinking in both worlds. As Belting states,

Die heutige Globalisierung der Perspektive, die in dem westlichen

Patent der weltweiten Medien TV und Presse Unterstützung findet,
hat in der Kolonisation anderer Erdteile wie auch in ihrer
Missionerung für das Christentum eine erstaunlich lange
Vorgeschichte. In diesem gewaltsamen Export wurde die
Perspective anderen Kulturen gegen deren eigene Sehgewohnheiten
förmlich aufgezwungen. (Belting 2008: 54)

As observed by the art historian Peter Owen,

the same perspective system was used by Byzantine, Islamic,

Chinese, Indian, and Persian artists, and can also be seen in early
periods of Assyrian and Egyptian art and European Medieval paint-
ing. Children and “naïve” or outsider artists also rely on this system
to express three-dimensional form. (Owen 1970: 204)

As noted by Westgeest11, this system of projection of three-dimensional

space onto the two-dimensional picture plane was used in Persian
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 139

miniature painting as well. I will come back to this topic when I undertake
the visual analysis of those miniatures further below in this chapter.

Vertical compositions/vertical perspective

Around the fourteenth century the Shiraz School of miniature painting in-
troduced a new system of vertical perspective, in which figures are shown
one over the other, overlapping, and where such things as ponds and car-
pets appear as flat on the page.12 In Humay and Humayan Meeting in the
Garden13 (fig. 120, see full color section), we can see this way of placing
the figures one over the other in this miniature that depicts two lovers who
meet at night in a luxurious and enclosed garden. In this kind of vertical
perspective, the objects most distant from the spectator are placed at the
top; those closest at the bottom. After analyzing Persian miniatures, it
seems that there is a tendency to use this kind of vertical perspective from
the late fourteenth century onwards.
On the other hand, layering or vertical composition in the arrangement
of the sitters in the pictorial space, has been used by several Persian paint-
ing schools. A well-known example of this is The Court of Fath ‘Ali Shah,
painted by an unknown artist around 1815 (fig. 121, see full color section).
It is an image in miniature scale, which evokes the monumental imperial
enthronement scenes. The watercolor is one of a series of reduced copies
of life-size wall paintings in the Negarestan palace outside of Tehran, as
stated by Diba. She argues further that

the original wall paintings represented an imaginary New Year’s re-

ception at the court of the monarch. The murals were completed in
1812-13 for the reception hall of the palace, by a team of artists led
by ‘Abdullah Khān. The copies (undated and unsigned, and exe-
cuted in opaque watercolor, oil, and engraving) were produced
sometime between the completion of the mural in 1812-13 and
1834, the year of Fath ‘Ali Shah’s death. (Diba 1998: 174)

The central image depicts Fath ‘Ali Shah enthroned with twelve of his
sons.14 Fath ‘Ali Shah sits on an impressive jeweled throne with a sword
on his lap and a water pipe in his hand. As Diba explains, his sons are all
depicted standing (a symbol of respect) with their arms crossed. In the low-
er section ambassadors from France, Great Britain, Russia, the Ottoman
Empire and the kingdoms of Sind and Arabia are depicted in meticulous
detail.
140 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

4.2 The use of space in Persian miniature painting

Having defined the different types of spatial composition, I will analyze a

selected group of Persian miniatures that show all or some of the three spa-
tial elements that I have just introduced and defined above.
One of the miniatures in which we can more clearly notice the isometri-
cal perspective used to suggest the three-dimensional space, is Nighttime in
a Palace (fig. 122, see full color section). We can notice that all lines re-
main parallel in the three dimensions of the space, not receding to a van-
ishing point, and all the figures depicted in this painting have the same
size. The vertical composition here only seems to reinforce the suggestion
of a three-dimensional space by isometrical perspective. In this dense im-
age of urban life in sixteenth-century Iran, all kinds of people from differ-
ent social and economic classes and ages are depicted, all engaged in dif-
ferent activities. In the bottom left corner of the painting, there is a group
of male musicians playing different instruments. Right above them, a
prince hosts a reception for noblemen on a tiled blue terrace. Notice the
three servants bringing fruits and cones of sugar. There is also a group of
women sitting on a balcony in the upper left part of the image and obser-
ving what is happening on the terrace while listening to the music being
played by the musicians. Candles, oil lamps and other lighting sources are
spread all over the space in the private houses, the markets (see an active
market scene right in the center of the painting) and the mosque (see the
right top corner). This is a fascinating painting where many different events
are happening simultaneously in multiple centers of attention and with a
narrative that gives the image a temporal and spatial dimension at the same
time. The grid layout structure is also evident. The apparent lack of compo-
sitional organization in this picture is remarkable. Instead it appears to be
a series of urban and genre-like architectural boxes comfortably fitted
together.
Here it is important to note that the majority of the Persian miniatures
that I have seen during this research are vertical. In this particular painting,
it is especially clear that there is a combination of two spatial strategies to
give the painting an alternative way of suggesting perspective: isometrical
and vertical perspective. In the vertical perspective, the objects most distant
from the viewer are placed at the top, whereas the objects closest to the
viewer are placed at the bottom. This combination of isometrical and verti-
cal perspectives is typical of Persian miniature painting and I have not
found it, for instance, in Japanese or Chinese painting. Actually, it is rele-
vant in order to understand the difference in the use of isometrical perspec-
tive in these countries that the origin of axonometry in China was found in
the Chinese scroll paintings. A typical scroll painting has a size of approxi-
mately 40 cms high by several meters wide. Thiadmer Riemersma explains
that,
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 141

for these scroll paintings, the Chinese painters needed a perspective

that had no explicit vanishing points; every scene of the scroll paint-
ing would be seen individually, and a vanishing point that lies out-
side the viewpoint creates a disoriented view of the scene. The
Chinese painters solved the problem by drawing lines along the z-
axis as parallel lines in the scroll painting. This has the effect of pla-
cing the horizon at an imaginary line high above the painting. The
axonometric projection is a technical term for a group of perspec-
tives to which Chinese parallel perspective also belongs.
(Riemersma 2001: 3)

This is an important difference between the arrangement of the space and

use of isometrical perspective used in China and Japan (horizontal format)
and introduced here in contrast to Iran (vertical format). Notice that Japan
also has kakemono (hanging vertical scroll) as opposed to makimono which
is meant to be unrolled laterally on a flat surface. The kakemono is in-
tended to be hung against a wall as part of the interior decoration and
lacks, due to its format, the isometric perspective approach that was shown
in the horizontal scrolls. Interestingly, what both pictorial traditions share
and what makes them different from a Western spatial approach in paint-
ing, is that in Oriental painting the eyes scan parallel to the surface instead
of looking from foreground to background as in the Western approach.
Wedding Celebration of Prince Homāy and Princess Homāyun (fig. 123,
see full color section) painted by Joneyd Naqqāsh Sultāni in 1396, is an-
other example where we find several of the spatial elements introduced
above. It is an important work, since it plays an important role on the topic
of signatures and paintings treated in chapter 2. As noted by Blair,

the window-grille above the princess’s head (the one sitting on her
bed at the left side of the image), bears the signature of Junayad,
“the royal painter”, the first unquestionably genuine signature in
Persian manuscript painting. (Blair & Bloom 1994: 33)

Here the vertical perspective used to suggest three-dimensional space is

again evident: the way in which the figures have been arranged to give the
impression that the ones placed at the bottom are closest to the observer,
whereas the ones placed at the top are most distant. In this case, the prin-
cess is the one that seems to be furthest from our view, inside of her room
and sitting on her bed. In the words of Grabar, “a fascinating composition
with dominant red colors in which all the episodes of a wedding, from sex-
ual consummation to dancing, are either depicted or symbolized” (Grabar
2000: 55). Blair tells us that,
142 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

the depiction of architecture is particularly elaborate, with geometric

tile dadoes, floral arabesque archways, compartment carpets, and
carved plaster grilles displayed in a dazzling array of brilliant blues,
oranges and reds. This world of eternal lyricism in which flowers
bloom and birds sing forever is one of the most characteristic fea-
tures of Persian manuscript painting of the following century. (Blair
1994: 33)

The most interesting study for my own research that I have found on the
understanding and use of space in Persian miniature painting is “The Use
of Space in Timurid Painting” by the Islamic art historian Robert
Hillenbrand. He focuses his study on four specific areas where the spatial
understanding of space in Persian miniature painting is at its most intense:
architecture, the preference for solid blocks of color or form, the margin
and the use of empty space. I will just refer to the first two aspects, since
they are the ones relevant for my own analysis of nineteenth-century
Iranian photographs. In his words, “most strikingly of all, Timurid painting
learned to suggest an architectural framework rather than to display it”
(Hillenbrand 1992: 77). This idea can be clearly appreciated in the next
miniature, the Shāh-nāme (The Book of the Kings)15 scene Ardashir and
his slave-girl Golnār, which he analyzed. He points out, “it is the differ-
ence in plane within the architecture which helps structure the picture and
above all integrate it with the text”. The vertical divisions of the architec-
ture reinforce those of the text columns, and the blocks of color operate in
harmony with that aim. In this case, it is important to note that it is the
choice of architectural division that has placed considerable emphasis on
the sleeping personages. This element is also found at times in nineteenth-
century Iranian photography, text framing or surrounding the photograph.
Another example of this kind of architectural arrangement is to be found in
the Nezāmi’s British Library Khamse scene Hārun al-Rashid in a
Bathouse (fig. 124, see full color section). This miniature constitutes a
good example of what a public bath at that time was like, where even the
caliph leaves his own crown in a cupboard in the room where the men get
undressed. This miniature is interesting as well because it shows a different
organization of the space, as remarked by Grabar: “simple brick walls have
replaced richly colorful decorated ones, and all the bathhouse employees
are shown in their work clothes” (Grabar 2000: 115) .
In the classic study by D. H. Zain, Formal Values in Timurid painting,
the author includes numerous schema of design that clearly show the grid
layout and block schema that I am concerned with regarding Persian min-
iatures. Zain’s work was brought to my attention reading Hillenbrand’s ar-
ticle on the uses of space in Timurid painting. Three of the figures shown
in Zain’s study are design schemas of miniatures that I have selected for
this chapter. One of them (fig. 125) is the schema of design of the
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 143

miniature that I have presented. We can also appreciate here the isometric
perspective that is clearly recognizable by the parallel lines in the z-axis
that do not recede towards a vanishing point.
The most used contemporary fashion for composing an image on several
levels is often reflected on the architectural forms themselves and those
forms would allow many stories to happen at the same time, implying
depth both in form and meaning. As Hillenbrand stated, “a more dramatic
version of the same idea is found in the sharp zigzag movement of succes-
sive flights of stairs that are sometimes used in miniatures” (Hillenbrand
1992: 78). This is especially clear in The Seduction of Yusuf, the celebrated
scene of Yusuf pursued by Zoleykā in the Cairo Saadi’s16 Bustān of 893,
painted in 1488 as it is written on the cartouche to the left of the iwan, and
that is a painting which implies the passage of time as well as a sequence
of spaces (fig. 126, see full color section). This miniature is signed by the
great master Behzād on the architectural panel over the window in the
room on the upper left. In this case, as Hillenbrand explains further,

the explosive impact of the encounter between the two major prota-
gonists owes much of its intensity to the earlier temporal and spatial
building-up. The artist has responded to the accumulated suspense
and eventual dramatic climax of the literary text with an extraordi-
narily apt visual equivalent whereby the principals of each tale con-
front each other at the very top of the picture–pictorially speaking
at the very last moment. Thus time is suggested by space.
(Hillenbrand 1992: 78)

He concludes this part of the story with the description of an architectural

construct that is rich and laden with mystical overtones.
In Behzad’s painting, the architectural forms are extremely rich, but they
are also empty. As noted by Sims, “In the midst of this patterned elabora-
tion, color and the absence of pattern draw the eye to the two figures and
their relationship” (Sims 2002: 328). Notice here, once more, the perfectly-
designed page with the columns, where the text has been written, being the
ones that decide the final composition of the painting with a grid layout.
As stated by the Islamic art historian and curator Lisa Golembek,

the correspondence of text and painting in detail and in emphasis

are static levels of relationship. There is yet in Behzad’s painting a
dynamic level in which the formal composition actively conveys
meaning (Golembek 1972: 28).

The grid layout is perfectly noticeable in Zain’s schema (fig. 127). Note as
well the isometric perspective approach to suggest three-dimensional space.
For instance, the balcony in the right top corner of the miniature shows
144 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

clearly the parallel lines in each space direction and the same holds true
for any other part of the structure of the building. The vertical composition
is also shown here, like in all other miniatures selected for this section.
Persian painters tended to use solid blocks of form and color to create their
miniatures. Often these blocks are created by the structure of the building
where the scene is taking place, in other occasions blocks may be created
by rectilinear or multifold ponds, doors, balconies, floors, etc. In the words
of Hillenbrand,

it is a prerequisite of their compositional role that they should be as

monochrome as is consistent with their nature. Thus they establish
a presence in the picture, something that is much more than mere
decorative infill or background. They have an obvious spatial sig-
nificance. (Hillenbrand 1992: 84)

In Funeral Procession, from Mantiq al-teyr (“The Conference of the

Birds”) by Farid al-Din Attār17, 1483 (fig. 128, see full color section), the
ground is shown in several receding planes. The landscape, in fact, consti-
tutes a true background to the depicted subjects. The tree that strays out-
side the frame-like margins is an element that was adopted by Persian min-
iaturists as an influence from the Chinese painting tradition. Contrary to
what Rudrauf stated regarding diffuse composition, that the eye is not
guided to go from one object to another (read before in this chapter),
Grabar states in Mostly Miniatures, that,

if we go a little further in the analysis, we discover the curious fact

that despite the apparently artificial compositions of the human fig-
ures, two details are rendered somewhat less unreal. One is the im-
portant clue of the gaze. All the miniatures of a certain quality are
organized by a circuit of gazes that the protagonists launch at each
other. It is a complex and passionate game of clues that, as in em-
broidery, organizes the relationships among the persons. (Grabar
2000: 133)

We can see this in this miniature, in which a complex composition is

shown, and as he explains further,

heads and eyes compel a dynamic movement leading up to the

snake in the tree, which is about to gobble up the eggs in the nest.
The other trait are the witnesses, a whole world of figures who are
there as if to bear witness to the truth of what is depicted; they are
furnished with a formulary of gestures whose details it would be in-
teresting to unravel. These two traits are familiar in Italian painting
of the same centuries, but they have been miniaturized in Persian
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 145

painting and demand a greater effort from the observer, just as the
painter was obliged to work with a precision that did not allow for
error. (Grabar 2000: 133-36)

This painting is a good example to see the funerary practices in the fif-
teenth century. As explained by Sims, a funeral procession arrives at the
gate of the cemetery; inside workmen are preparing the grave of the man
whose coffin is preceded by his mourning son, clothes torn from his upper
body. He is placed in the vertical center of the picture, on the direct axis
supplied by one corner of the platform where his father’s grave is being
dug. The secondary axis of the picture is the horizontal line of the ceme-
tery wall, effectively dividing the two parts of the picture. Notice that, even
if this miniature is mostly non-architectural, the isometric perspective is
working: the octagonal fence that is depicted at the top left corner is shown
with parallel lines in the three directions of space. Once again, Zain’s sche-
ma shows the grid layout structure and we can see the parallel lines that I
have just talked about in the octagonal fence (fig. 129).
Some experts in the field of Persian painting have tried to explain the
fact that the Persian miniature painters did not use linear perspective to
suggest a three-dimensional space. For instance, the art historian Sheila
Canby says of Persian painting,

by favoring two-dimensionality and compositional harmony, they

presented things as they should be, not necessarily as they are.
Within these parameters, Persian artists produced paintings over six
centuries unrivalled in their perfect realization of an ideal world.
(Canby 1993: 7)

She goes on to say that,

No matter what its period, a great Persian painting will exhibit a

distinct sense of design and an understanding of how to arrange col-
ors and forms on a flat surface to form a rhythmic whole. Despite
the influence of European art from the seventeenth century onwards,
Persian painters do not appear to have been convinced of the desir-
ability of the illusionism that transforms two dimensions into the
suggestion of three. Perhaps such visual tricks seemed innately dis-
honest. Finally, this art of highly developed surface values draws
the viewer in, but does not trespass into his world. Before the nine-
teenth century the figures in Persian painting almost never look di-
rectly at the viewer. Later, when they do, they keep their emotions
to themselves. Yet, the most gifted Persian artists could capture their
sitters’ character without invading their wall of reserve. (Canby
1993: 11-12)
146 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

In conclusion, Persian miniatures do display a diffuse composition and grid

structure layout. Often the proper structure of the buildings, the architectur-
al structures that compose the painting, help stress this multiple-centered
composition dividing the space into blocks. The third dimension is brought
to life with the help of receding planes and with several scenes happening
simultaneously, therefore achieving that multiple-center or diffuse composi-
tion, which is at the same time spatial and temporal.
The isometric system of projection to suggest perspective is used consis-
tently in Persian miniature painting, one of the influences from Chinese
traditional painting. Next to this, the vertical composition/vertical perspec-
tive is used consistently in Persian miniatures as well. The combination of
these two strategies to suggest perspective is, in my opinion, a unique ele-
ment found in this painting tradition.

4.3 The use of space in nineteenth-century photography

in Iran

I will explore in this section the way in which space has been arranged in
nineteenth-century Iranian photography (be it due to the photographers’
taste, be it due to technical restrictions of the camera). An immediate ques-
tion is whether isometrical perspective, diffuse composition, the grid layout
structure and vertical composition/vertical perspective are to be found in
nineteenth-century photography as they are in traditional Persian painting.
As was the case in the previous chapters, another important question to be
answered is whether this understanding of space is something peculiar to
the Persian visual arts tradition or if it can be found in other countries. It is
important to note that isometrical perspective is impossible in photography.
As stated by the chief curator of photography at MOMA in the 1990s,
Peter Galassi,

the ultimate origins of photography (both technical and aesthetic)

lie in the fifteenth-century invention of linear perspective. The tech-
nical side of this statement is simple: photography is nothing more
than a means for automatically producing pictures in linear perspec-
tive. The aesthetic side is more complex and is meaningful only in
broader historical terms. (Galassi 1981: 12)

Therefore, as far as the topic on isometrical projection is concerned, there

is no possible argumentation when related to photography: no matter who
is behind the camera, an Italian, Iranian or Malawian photographer, the
result will always be a photograph in true linear perspective, as a result of
the monocular viewpoint, which is also the basis of Alberti’s theory of lin-
ear perspective. I have established different categories of photographs in
order to be able to study in depth the different spatial characteristics
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 147

present in Persian traditional painting as well as in photography. I have

named the first group diffuse compositions/grid structure and the second
vertical composition/vertical perspective.
The first group that I have defined is diffuse composition/grid structure,
a term that means, as I elaborated in the previous section, the presence of
multiple centers of attention within the photographic space. In order to un-
derstand it fully and to be able to give enough examples of the composi-
tion used in nineteenth-century Iranian photography, I will broaden my
scope and consider other kinds of photographs besides portrait studio
photographs, since it is difficult to find those Persian elements of composi-
tion (diffuse compositions, grid layout structure and vertical composition)
in them. I will start with a photograph taken by an unknown Iranian photo-
grapher in which a group of schoolboys are depicted together with their
teachers from the school Nawbar in Tabriz. We can see that there is no spe-
cial center of attention. On the contrary, the eye can scan the whole content
of the picture freely and without a fixed path (fig. 130). See, for instance,
the window on the right, full of people, in the same way that miniatures
present different scenes, all with the same importance as far as information
is concerned, as we have seen previously. These are examples of Rudrauf’s
diffuse composition. Further, we can also make an abstraction of the photo-
graph and we get a grid structure as we did before with a miniature. There
is an especially remarkable photograph of a group of schoolchildren gath-
ered together to celebrate a special school event (fig. 131) in Moshiriyye’s
school in Yazd. The way in which the space has been depicted is interest-
ing. See the left half of the image, where a group of teachers is depicted
sitting around a huge table and the upper right part of the image in which
a large group of schoolboys has been densely packed in a reduced space,al-
most ascending up to the ceiling. Here the monocular linear perspective of
the table drives the eye from the front to the back. This photograph is, in-
deed, a good example to illustrate the fact that photography is a perfect
technique to produce pictures in perfect linear perspective. But, at the same
time, the general aspect of the image is that of miniatures, with their multi-
ple centers of attention and grid layout structure. The Persian carpets that
are hung on the walls, fully covering them, help to give the final image the
appearance of a miniature. Notice the three men on the balcony in the top
left of the image, looking downwards, as in many miniatures, at what is
happening in the hall. Another example of a photograph where this minia-
ture-like structure is clear is figure 132. These kinds of images are exam-
ples of what I introduced above about the “invasion” of space by people.
Here it is important to remark that the possible parallels that I may estab-
lish between photography and miniatures are only valid from a pure formal
point of view. The important temporal and spatial narrative dimension pre-
sent in the miniatures I have analyzed in the previous sections, is some-
thing that the photographs do not have. Further, the fact that the miniature
148 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

belongs to a book that has its precise place between the previous miniature
and the following one is fundamental and needs to be pointed out in order
to avoid confusion or to arrive at false conclusions.
The second group of photographs is vertical composition. An interesting
photograph is one that depicts a group of seven men arranged in two rows,
occupying two horizontal planes, and dividing the photographic space into
two identical halves, in two independent spaces (fig. 133). The governor of
Kerman is depicted sitting on a carpet on the lower row, on the left of the
image, next to two colleagues. The carpet bends along the stair to become
the carpet on which the other four men on the upper row are also sitting.
The plane of the photographer has been lowered in order to get a frontal
image where the whole group is packed within the photograph’s horizontal
frame. The formal parallelism in the vertical composition between this
photograph and figure 121 (see full color section) is remarkable. This is in-
teresting, since isometric projection suggests birdeye’s perspective.
One extreme example of this vertical composition is an image that dis-
plays the most bizarre composition of a group of people – in this case four
men – that I have found during my research (fig. 134). The original glass
plate is partially broken, so we can only see in the print four heads of the
five military men depicted. The heads of the four men have been arranged
on a vertical line, fully covering the vertical photographic frame. The
photograph was taken by the Iranian photographer Mirzā Mehdi Chehreh-
Namā, who ran a very well-known studio in Isfahan.
There are several photographs that I have found during my research that
show an aesthetic approach similar to those of the miniatures. This effect
is caused, as I will explain shortly, by the technical restrictions of the cam-
era rather than by an aesthetical intention of the photographer. I will call
this group optical illusions. Nāser al-Din Shah took the next two photo-
graphs considered here. The two women depicted in these images, seem to
have been pasted onto the blurred backdrop, giving them the impression
that they are partially floating in the photographic space. This probably
happens due to the technical restrictions of the camera rather than due to
an aesthetical effect intended by the photographer, but the perception of
both of them is similar to those of the miniatures and this effect is rein-
forced by the carpet, clothing and pose of these women. Notice that here
the presence of the carpet is an important element that conditions the per-
ception of the space by the viewer of the final image, as was the case in
the previous picture. The first one depicts Iran al-Moluk (fig. 135), daugh-
ter of Nāser al-Din Shah. The second depicts Bakhbaubashi (the one to the
left), one of the wives of Nāser al-Din Shah (fig. 136), the receding stairs
giving a true perspective to the final image. In both pictures there is a se-
paration between the foreground and the background, therefore a linear
perspective as I have already pointed out at the beginning of this section.
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 149

Within this group, we could consider another sub-group of photographs,

which show another peculiar element to be found in some nineteenth-
century Iranian photographs: the use of the middle horizon in the photo-
graphic space. As we know from the laws of composition in Western
photography, one should not place the horizon exactly in the middle of the
photograph. But if we analyze the next two photographs, we clearly see
that this is exactly what happened: a row of kneeling mullahs (religious
men) is placed in the upper half of the photographic space, just starting at
the horizon line or the middle line of the photograph, leaving an empty
and wide space in the lower half of the image (figs. 137 and 138).
Actually this is just an optical illusion, since there is a carpet in both
photographs that, as a result of the bad quality of the print that lost its
sharpness, we cannot see clearly. Further, the placing of the horizon right
in the middle of the photographs is most probably due to technical restric-
tions of the camera, because the photographer needed to lower his camera
in order to take a frontal image of the group and therefore, the carpet or
floor, would have taken a dominant role in the image. It is important to
note that this way of arranging the space is only found in photography and
therefore peculiar to this medium due to technical restrictions of the cam-
era, since it is not found in Persian traditional painting, where the lower
half of the image is especially important in its content and density of infor-
mation. Next to this kind of image, there is another one that depicts men
as if they were floating in the air. I have selected one photograph to illus-
trate this spatial illusion. A portrait of Hājji Hoseyn Quli Khān Nuri
Mostowfi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, taken by an anonymous Iranian
photographer (fig. 139). Next to this kind of images, there is one that is in-
teresting as a collage and because of the spatial arrangement of the three
women depicted therein, all of them floating in the photographic space
(fig. 140). This is actually the page of one of the albums of Nāser al-Din
Shah’s wives. Three full portraits of women have been cut out and pasted
directly onto the album page and the final image presents a peculiar under-
standing of space since the three identical women are literally floating on
the album page like the men in the previous two portraits. This kind of col-
lage became quite popular amongst the Shah and his family, since they ap-
pear quite regularly in the albums’ pages in the last years of his reign. An
important difference between this last image and the previous photograph
is that, in the collage, the photographer would be the one that decided to
give the floating effect to the sitters, not the camera!
It has often been remarked that the lower part of a visual pattern de-
mands more weight. As stated by Arnheim,

gravitation is probably at the root of this asymmetry in the vertical

dimension, but how its effect on vision comes about is not known.
The compensation, which keeps the lower part of a pattern from
150 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

looking too light or too small, is needed everywhere, except for the
structurally strong shapes, which resist the distortion of angles. It
cannot be maintained, however, that general artistic practice makes
patterns look heavier at the bottom – that is, lowers the center of
gravity. True, in the landscape that man, the land animal, sees
around himself, the lower part of the visual field is crowded with
buildings, fields, trees, and events whereas the sky is relatively
empty. A corresponding effect is sought in the arts wherever the
realistic representation of solid bodies is intended. By lowering the
center of gravity, the painter or sculptor adapts his work to the
asymmetry of physical space. This practice, however, is not univer-
sal. It goes with certain styles only. For instance, modern art –be-
cause of its trend towards abstraction – has little use for this uneven
distribution of masses. (Arnheim 1969: 20-21)

This is also true for some Iranian photographers active in the nineteenth
century. For instance, in those images of a group of kneeling religious
men, they actually seem to be levitating while being photographed and
they do have, indeed, a very light appearance.
There is another group of photographs that can be considered as a sub-
group of the one I am now analyzing. Plan-perpendicular shows the use
of this way of understanding space. One of the peculiarities encountered in
the Iranian style is the representation of sitters themselves in the perspec-
tive, above a patterned carpet that is shown in plan-perpendicular (straight-
from-above) view and has no particular relationship to the rest of the
studio setting, as we can see in the photograph where a man sitting on a
chair is depicted (fig. 141). This image of Mohammad Ebrahim Khān
Me’mārbāshi, Minister of Defense and head of the Tehran department, pre-
sents as well an illusionary perception of the sitters, as if they were floating
on the air. This element is also typical of the Indian photography of that
time. We can see an obvious resemblance between this image and fig. 142
(see full color section), an 1885 album print taken by an unknown Indian
photographer and painted partially with opaque watercolor where a music-
loving landowner is depicted. The image shows him sitting, his face, hands
and feet remaining photographic. Flatness of space is achieved through the
way the carpet is painted, as in miniatures. Also the lack of shadows in the
colors helps this non-perspective element of space. As the art historian and
critic Judith Mara Gutman states in her book Through Indian Eyes. 19th
and Early 20th Century Photography from India,

when photography was introduced to India in the nineteenth cen-

tury, photographic expression followed the same pattern as paintings
did. Photographers made photographs that emulated the space and
subjects found in Indian paintings, using the patterns and forms that
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 151

streamed through their aesthetic traditions; this ultimately changed

the place, role, function, and representation of those patterns in
photographs. Many photographs were composed with the same spa-
tial arrangements that existed in paintings. (Gutman 1982: 69)

In sum, the grid layout typical of the Persian miniatures is also to be found
in Iranian photographs that depict large groups of people spread over a
more or less large space, be it the entrance of a school, a room in a school,
a market, a theater, palace, etc. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the
grid-like structure found in photographs was consciously displayed by
Iranian photographers. People seem to completely inhabit the given space,
and the final result (the photograph taken by the photographer who was in
front of the scene without interacting with it), formally, resembles the grid
layout structure and multiple centers of attention that I have analyzed in
detail in the sections concerned with miniatures. Next to this, a vertical ten-
dency towards organizing the sitters is also to be noted. The majority of
the miniatures is vertical, whereas most of the group photographs of the
kind analyzed here are horizontal, which could be explained in technical
terms (but I say this very carefully as further research is needed in order to
fully prove this hypothesis). Since the majority of the miniatures is used as
a page in a book it seems that the artists find themselves with no choice
but the vertical arrangement. In this respect the photographers do not feel
such limitations and as a result the horizontal arrangements of sitters in the
case of large groups of people are commonly found in the photographs of
the period. It is important to note that the conclusions drawn here are ex-
clusively from a formal approach. The placement of the horizon in the
middle of the photographic space is something peculiar to some Iranian
photographs and this, most probably, happens in this way due to technical
restrictions of the camera rather than a self-conscious or unconscious
aesthetical approach of the photographer to achieve this particular effect.
Photographers, in this sense, did not arrange the space. The camera did that
for them. They did frame the part of reality that they wanted to show and
composed the final image within that frame.
I have shown through visual analysis of the paintings and photographs
selected for this chapter that the understanding of space is one of the cul-
tural components involved in the process of producing a painting or a
photograph, even if later technical limitations of the camera definitely play
a role in the final image. I have created a theoretic model to classify my
corpus of paintings and photographs according to spatial components. For
the paintings corpus I have defined three groups: diffuse composition/grid
structure; isometrical perspective and vertical composition/vertical struc-
ture. For the photographic corpus I have defined two groups: diffuse com-
position/grid structure and vertical composition/vertical perspective.
Persian miniatures employ diffuse composition and grid structure layout to
152 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

achieve multiple-center or diffuse composition that is at the same time spa-

tial and temporal. Furthermore, by using the isometric system of projection
they provide a consistent usage of space, one of the many influences of
Chinese traditional painting on Persian miniature painting. However, the
combination of these two strategies to suggest space is, in my opinion, un-
ique to the traditional Persian miniature.

Notes

1 Prominent Japanese philosopher, founder of what has been called the Kyoto School of
Philosophy.
2 In Leiden, September 2008. I am very grateful to Helen Westgeest for her ideas and read-
ing of the photographs and paintings selected for this chapter, especially regarding the to-
pic of axonometry/isometrical perspective and grid structure layout.
3 Williamson 1986.
4 Wellesz 1936.
5 The Zafar-nameh is an epic poem written by the Persian poet Hamdollah Mostowfi (d.
1334). The epic history explores Iranian history from the Arab conquest to the Mongols.
6 Dunham 1949.
7 Nizami-ye Ganjavi (1140-1202), who is considered the greatest romantic epic poet in
Persian literature, brought a coloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic. His Khamsa
consisted of 5 poems written in the form of couplets: Makhzan al-Asrar( “Treasure of
Secrets”, 1177); Khosrov and Shirin (1180); Leyla and Majnun (1188); Haft Paikar
(“Seven Beautiful Girls”, 1196) and Iskandar-Nama (1203, usually divided into the
Sharaf-Nama, which deals with Iskandar’s conquests, and the Iqbal-Nama, which deals
with his prophetic mission). For general information, see, Rypka, J.R. Rypka (1968),
History of Iranian Literature. Dordrecht: 210-219.
8 Adle 1975. I am grateful to Oleg Grabar for directing me to this article and for his com-
ments of this chapter.
9 The invention of linear perspective in Western art in the Renaissance was achieved
through the discovery of the mathematical priciples that underly the concept of perspec-
tive by the Arab polymath Abu Ali Ibn al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham (965-1040), known in
the West as Alhazen. He made significant contributions to the principles of optics, astron-
omy, anatomy, visual perception and to science in general with his introduction to the
scientific model. See: Saliba, G. (2007), Islamic Science and the Making of the European
Renaissance, Cambridge; and “al-Haytam”, in Onians, J. (2007), Neuroarthistory. From
Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, New Haven and London: Yale University
Press: 38-41
10 Taken from Krikke 1996.
11 Interview in Leiden, December 2008.
12 See: Talbot 1971.
13 Humay and Humayan is a medieval Persian romance written by the Persian poet Khwaju
Kirmani (1280- 1352). For further information see “Humay and Humayan: A Medieval
Persian Romance“, in Annali Instituto Italiano per il Medio e Estremo Oriente, Roma,
1990: 347-57.
14 For a detailed description of this image and identification of Fath ‘Ali Shah’s sons, see:
Eskandari-Qajar, Manoutchehr, M. (2008): “The Message of the Negarestan Mural of
Fath ‘Ali Shah and His Sons: Snapshot of Court Protocol or Determinant of Dynastic
Succession”, in Qajar Studies, Rotterdam/Gronsveld/Santa Barbara/Tehran: IQSA: 17-41.
ARRANGEMENT OF SPACE 153

15 “The Book of the Kings” is the national epic of Iran written by the Persian master of po-
etry Abu al-Qasim Firdowsi (934-1025-26). He devoted 35 years to write the Shahname
and this is he most studied of all Persian manuscripts, which was never finished.
16 Sheikh Saa’di (full name: Mosleh al-Din Moshref ibn Abdollāh), born in Shiraz (1184-
1283-1291?) is one of the major Persian poets of the medieval period. He is recognized
not only for the quality of his writting, but also for the depth of his sociological thoughts.
His best known works are Bustān (The Orchard) completed in 1257 and Gulistan (The
Rose Garden) in 1258. Bustān is entirely in verse (epic meter) and consists of stories to il-
lustrate the good virtues recommended to Muslims and also includes reflections of the be-
havior of dervishes and their ecstatic practices.
17 Farid ad-Din Attar (1142-1220) was a Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic. “The Language of
the Birds” is a book of poems of aproximately 4,500 lines. The poem uses a journey by a
group of 30 birds, led by a hoopoe as an allegory of a Sufi sheikh or master leading his
pupils to enlightenment.
5 INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN
AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY

For Kausar Turabi

Born originals, how does it come to pass that we die copies?

Edward Young1

Nineteenth-century Iranian photography, with all its unique characteristics

from Iranian culture and arts, is not free from the influence of the Western
aesthetics of the period. The Victorian model, with its characteristics of
hieratical and frontal pose, is the main referent of Western aesthetic mod-
els. Iranian court photographers, who were more exposed to this foreign
influence, exhibit a sharp contrast to the local photographers who lived in
smaller cities or towns, or worked in bazaars, far away from the court, and
whose work I have analyzed in the previous chapters. It is also worth noti-
cing that in spite of this contrast, Iranian photographers managed to create
their own style suitable for the Iranian taste and culture. This style, a hy-
brid of two aesthetics, produced plenty of examples among the existing
photographs of the period and even has found its way to modern
photography.

5.1 Schema of positions in portrait photography

When defining the possible positions in portrait studio photography of two

sitters belonging to two different cultures (here I will consider Iranian and
non-Iranian, a person belonging to any Western culture in this particular
example) by photographers belonging to the same two cultures, I have
found four different possibilities: Western photographer (WPh) versus
Western sitter (WS); Western photographer (WPh) versus Iranian sitter
(IS); Iranian photographer (IPh) versus Western sitter (WS) and Iranian
photographer (IPh) versus Iranian sitter (IS). Two of them belong to the ca-
tegory of photographing the self (here understanding the self as a culture,
as one’s own culture): WPh-WS and IPh-IS. The other two belong to the
category of photographing the other: WPh-IS and IPh-WS. I have summar-
ized the different possibilities of positions in studio portrait photography in
the following diagram (graphic 1, see full color section): There are six
156 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

possibilities that can be grouped in three different categories. The first one
(blue lines) shows the pairs that compose the process of photographing and
representing the self, one’s own culture. The second one (red lines) shows
the pairs that compose the process of photographing the other, the foreign
culture. The pair WPh-IS has been studied in-depth in visual arts, espe-
cially in painting. To the best of my knowledge, to date the pair IPh-WS
has not been taken into consideration for serious research. The third cate-
gory (green lines) indicates the process of the self-portrait, the portrait that
the photographer takes of himself, being at the same time the photographer
and the sitter. Many male artists that went to the Near East and North
Africa, were often photographed in oriental costume, smoking a narguileh
and resting in the odalisque-like reclining pose. There are many well-
known examples of Western photographers portraying themselves dressed
up in local clothes, like the British photographer Francis Fritz (1822-1898)
posing in a Turkish summer dress (fig. 143). In contrast to this, numerous
examples of self-portraits of Iranian photographers present a sober and
self-conscious image of themselves, and most of the time their cameras are
an important part of the photograph. A self-portrait of the Iranian photogra-
pher Abd al- Qāsem ebn al-Nuri (fig. 144) illustrates this nicely.
By analyzing all the possible permutations shown in my diagram, we
can get an idea of the way in which both local and foreign sitters were re-
presented in nineteenth-century photography. By comparing all these dif-
ferent kinds of photographs, we can obtain a lot of information about the
way Western and Iranian photographers perceived and represented each
other more than one hundred and fifty years ago. In the previous chapters
of this book, I was mostly concerned with the pair Iranian photographer-
Iranian sitter. In the present chapter, I will focus my study on the pair
Western photographer-Iranian sitter. For any of the pairs presented above
in the diagram, it is always important to remember that the two main per-
sons involved in producing the final photograph, the photographer and the
person depicted, have a role and aspiration in their preconception of the
image to be achieved. Most of the time, the relationship between them
would be an unbalanced one, because of their different social status, cul-
ture or even gender. For instance, if the sitter is Nāser al-Din Shah and the
photographer a Westerner, then the Shah would have had a dominant role
in the way that he is depicted in the final image; whereas the same photo-
grapher taking a photograph of an anonymous local Iranian, then would be
the dominant one. By analyzing photographs, we can elucidate the kind of
relationship that was established between the person depicted and the
photographer at the time that the scene was frozen for eternity and, in more
general terms, the way in which Westerners perceived Iranians and
viceversa.
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 157

5.2 Western photographers versus local sitters:

Photographing the Other

In this section I will discuss the ways in which Western photographers re-
presented Iranians in the nineteenth century as a particular case of repre-
senting other cultures in photography, and to establish differences or simili-
tudes between the way Western photographers perceived and represented
Iranians and the way Iranians perceived themselves.
Photography was invented in Europe and exported to the rest of the
world as soon as the first photographer-travelers started heading for “exo-
tic” foreign countries in the nineteenth century. The intersection of photo-
graphy, printing, physical anthropology and colonial history produced hun-
dreds of thousands of photographs and reproductions that represented the
places and peoples of Asia as Westerners perceived them. In fact, they con-
stitute an image world. This term was used by the American literary theor-
ist, novelist and filmmaker Susan Sontag in her book On Photography.2 In
her words,

in the real world, something is happening and no one knows what

is going to happen. In the image-world, it has happened, and it will
forever happen in that way. (Sontag 1979: 168)

There is a long list of scholars that has delved in the topic image world
from different perspectives and has added further connotations to it. For
example, according to the anthropologist Deborah Poole,

the image world encompasses the “complexity and multiplicity of

this realm of images” and the flow of image objects and associated
ideas “from place to place, person to person, culture to culture, and
class to class”. (Poole 1997: 7)

The French anthropologist Christaud M. Geary explains that,

image makers, the subjects of the images, publishers, distribution

agencies and consumers were actively involved in the shaping of
this image world, in which images cross political and cultural
boundaries. The metaphor “image world” also implies a degree of
independence from the world that the images depict. (Geary 2002:
19)

In the words of the art historian Anandi Ramamurthy,

some of the most dominant ideological and photographic construc-

tions were developed during the nineteenth century and the camera
158 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

joined the gun in the process of colonization. The camera was used
to record and define those that were colonized according to the in-
terests of the West. Europe was defined as “the norm” upon which
other cultures should be judged. Whatever was different was disem-
powered by its very “Otherness”. (Ramamurthy 2004: 223-224)

In general terms, the “other” is anyone apart from one’s self. The existence
of others is crucial in defining what is “normal” and in locating one’s own
place in the world.

The other in photography

In the last years of the nineteenth century a prominent role was played by
the illustrated press which made use of photographs, particularly those ta-
ken by commercial photographers as the preferential means of spreading
Asian “knowledge” concerning Asia and its people. The scarcity of actual
knowledge concerning the Asian continent was countered by the enormous
potential of the “discourse” produced by it, along a path followed by the
colonial enterprise in line with the construction of a collective imagery
skilfully nurtured by photography. In the words of the Italian art historian
Silvana Palma written in her insightful article on nineteenth-century photo-
graphy in Africa, “photography drew the line between the visible and the
non-visible” (Palma 2005: 40). Paraphrasing Palma on her discourse, the
identification of what was shown and what was omitted enables us today
to measure the limits of Western “knowledge” of Asia. At the same time, it
is also possible to measure the strength of a representation, which proves
the ability of often imposing a misleading perception of Asian otherness.
As Palma states reflecting on this matter regarding Africa, but that also
holds true for Asia,

Called on not only to describe and document events but also to in-
terpret them, photographs contribute, through what they show, hide
or invent, to the construction of the imagery not only of a social
group but also of an entire age, shaped further by biased readings
of contemporary viewers. Today they effectively make it possible to
define the “mental landscape” that they helped to evoke, construct
and reinforce in their day, thus creating, despite all their fragmenta-
tion and gaps in a nonetheless effective and significant manner, the
ideological scaffolding that accompanied and supported the estab-
lishment of Western colonial power in Africa. They also guided re-
lations between the rulers and the ruled. (Palma 2005: 61)

Reflecting further on this topic, the historian Christopher Lyman incisively

noted,
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 159

photographs were not viewed as metaphors of experience, but rather

as sections of reality itself. If photographs showed gigantic trees
and awe-inspiring mountains, then all the trees were gigantic and all
the mountains were awe-inspiring. When photographs depicted
Indians as “savages”, Indians were confirmed as savages. (Lyman
1982: 29)

The visual anthropologist Christopher Pinney argues that,

much recent writing that seeks to historically contextualize photo-

graphy’s emergence during a period of colonial expansion has
drawn on crucial insights from Edward Said to Michael Foucault
and has tended to construct photographic imagery and practice as
immovably within a “truth” that simplistically reflects a set of cul-
tural and political dispositions held by the makers of those images.
Perhaps the starkest of these contributions is that offered by the
Algerian poet Malek Alloula in the Colonial harem (1987). By con-
sciously eschewing the study of the actual political and historical
consumption of images, Alloula spins an eloquent but untested hy-
pothesis concerning the role of “photography” as the “fertilizer of
the colonial vision (producing) stereotypes in the manner of great
seabirds producing guano”. (Pinney & Peterson 2003: 2-3)

Such debates tend to invoke formal readings of images that are made to do
the work of a pre-existing political hypothesis, continues Pinney. In Carlo
Ginzburg’ words “these are ‘physiognomic’ readings”, in which the analyst
“reads into them what he has already learned by other means, or what he
believes he knows, and wants to ‘demonstrate’” (Ginzburg 1989: 34).
Underpinning this approach, Ginzburg continues, is the conviction that
“works of art, in a broad sense, furnish a mine of first-hand information
that can explicate, without intermediaries, the mentally and emotive life of
a distant age” (Ginzburg 1989: 35). This is, precisely, what the corpus of
staged photographs taken by Western photographers in such “exotic” lands
constitute and represent.

Orientalism in photography
Before considering the topic of Orientalism in photography, it is important
to note here that the corpus of Oriental Studies is not reduced exclusively
to Said’s Orientalism. One does find the kind of approach in nineteenth-
century Western photography in Iran that Said has denominated as
Orientalist. This does not mean, however, that this is the only kind of
Western photography in the nineteenth century.3 In fact, one of the most
important European photographers active in Iran at that time, the German
160 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Ernst Hoeltzer (1855-1939), produced a remarkable amount of photographs

that are free from Orientalism as critized by Said. But Hoeltzer was an
amateur photographer and this is, indeed, an important fact: usually the
Western commercial photographers were the ones who used an orientalist
approach in their work, in contrast to those who were amateurs and there-
fore free from the demand of the photographic market. So the photographic
production was market-driven: the taste of the demand of the market did
play a role in the kind of photography that was produced.
The concept and term Orientalism was coined by Edward Said, who ex-
amined the process by which the “Orient” was constructed in European
thinking. Professional orientalists included scholars in various disciplines
such as languages, history and philosophy. However, for Said,

the discourse of Orientalism was much more widespread and ende-

mic in European thought. As well as a form of academic discourse,
it was a style of thought based on the ontological and epistemologi-
cal distinction between the “Orient” and the “Occident”. (Said
1978: 1)

More widely, Said discusses Orientalism,

as the corporate institution, dealing with it by making statements

about it, authorising views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling
it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for domi-
nating, restructuring, and having authority over the “Orient”. (Said
1978: 3)

Orientalism signified a mode of knowing the other, but was a supreme ex-
ample of the construction of the “Other”, a form of authority. In Said’s line
of thought, the Orient is not an inert fact of nature, but a phenomenon con-
structed by generations of intellectuals, artists, commentators, writers, poli-
ticians and, more importantly, constructed by the naturalisation of a wide
range of Orientalists’ assumptions and stereotypes. The relationship be-
tween the Occident and the Orient is a relationship of power, domination
and of varying degrees of a complex hegemony. Consequently, Orientalist
discourse is more valuable for Said as a sign of the power exerted by the
West over the Orient than a “true” discourse about the Orient.
Interestingly, twenty-five years after Said’s Orientalism, a whole field of
study has developed to analyze and interpret the denigrating fantasies of
the exotic “East” that sustained the colonial mind. But what about the fan-
tasies of “the West” in the eyes of “the East”? These questions remain lar-
gely unexamined and, as the Anglo-Dutch writer and academic Ian
Buruma and the Israeli philosopher and academic Avishai Margalit argue,
woefully misunderstood. A book by these authors is Occidentalism.4 The
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 161

term Occidentalism usually refers to stereotyped and sometimes dehuma-

nizing views of the so-called Western world, including Europe, the United
States and Australia. Iran constitutes but one of the many examples that il-
lustrate the previous discourse, but it must be noted that this phenomenon
never was as widespread as in other Middle Eastern countries and North
Africa. In comparison to those countries, actually, it was quite irrelevant.
A good example to illustrate what I have just introduced above is The
National Geographic Magazine published in April 1921,5 a volume de-
voted to Persia (fig. 145). It included two long articles: “Modern Persia
and Its Capital” (47 illustrations, 47 pages) by F.L. Bird who, for five
years, was an American college instructor in Tehran, and “Persian Caravan
Sketches” (62 illustrations, 51 pages) by Harold F. Weston. When going
through the magazine, it is especially striking to see the contrast between
the photographs of Persian women that illustrate the two articles and those
of the American women depicted in the forty-four pages devoted to adver-
tisements at the front and back of the magazine. On page 372, there is a
photograph whose caption reads “The almost blind leading the really blind
in Persia” (fig. 146). Next to the caption, there is a short text that I repro-
duce here verbatim:

There are many blind persons in Persia, owing partly to the intense
light rays of the sun. Tradition gives the following origin for the
wearing of the veils by Mohammedan women: One day when the
Prophet was seated with his favorite wife, Ayesha, a passing Arab
admired her, expressed a wish to purchase her, and offered a camel
in exchange. This experience so angered Mohammed that the cus-
tom of requiring women to wear veils resulted.

So, the caption talks about blinds and the text that comes along with it re-
fers to them only in the first sentence. The four remaining sentences are
devoted to the eternal Western obsession with the Muslim veil, something
that is recurrently found in the two articles of this magazine. On the next
page (fig. 147), there are two photographs in which different Persian
women have been depicted fully covered with a chādor. Their respective
captions read:

“Persian ladies leaving a public bath-house preceded by a domestic

servant” (the short text that comes together with the caption reads:
“Every Friday is ‘bath day’ in Persia, and a bath is obligatory be-
fore the faithful can worship. Frequently there is a public bath at-
tached to the mosque” and “Persian women in chadars” (short text:
“Both Christian and Mohammedan women wear the yashmak (veil)
out of doors, but the chadar (chuddar), or enveloping garment, is
peculiar to the followers of Mohammed”).
162 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Further, on page 392, there is a photograph of a Persian woman riding a

donkey (fig. 148) whose caption reads: “A Persian woman apparelled for a
pilgrimage” (short text: “The elaborate embroidered saddle-bag is a khor-
jin, in which both clothes and food are carried for the journey. The white
veil over the face is the yashmak”).
In contrast to this, the pages devoted to advertisements in which
Western women are depicted deserve an in-depth analysis too. The page
with an advertisement of the Motor Car Company (fig. 149) depicts a mod-
ern-dressed smiling woman holding a bouquet of flowers and waving to
four young elegant women that are sitting on a modern black car, reflecting
a quite emancipated attitude. The Persian woman riding the donkey con-
trasts deeply with the Western women represented in this advertisement.
This is shocking especially because the title of the magazine is “Modern
Persia and Its Capital” and the photographs selected do not show any kind
of modernity or wealth that was also a part of the Persian reality in the
nineteenth century. A couple of pages further we find an advertisement of
the American Radiator Company (fig. 150) that depicts a fine and elegant
Western young woman admiring a modern heating machine. After the two
articles devoted to Persia, we find twenty-eight pages of advertisements. In
one of them there is an advertisement by the Eastman Kodak Company
(fig. 151) that depicts a smiling and independent young woman carrying a
Kodak camera on her shoulder. With this kind of advertisement George
Eastman and other companies began to direct camera advertising specifi-
cally to female customers. The modern clothes, the loose hair and the lone-
liness of this young woman contrast deeply with the fully dressed and cov-
ered Persian women and their omnipresent company of a man, servant or
other women.
When analyzing the issue of The National Geographic Magazine de-
voted to Persia and its people, the photograph’s caption emerges as playing
an important role. This is because it has a clear influence on constructing
the otherness of the people living in “exotic” countries. In fact, images em-
ploy a complex amplitude of levels and modes of communication. In addi-
tion to codes of a more specifically visual nature, socio-cultural and lin-
guistic codes where the “written text” supports the image, are used to
shape its interpretation, as we have seen clearly while analyzing the maga-
zine. As stated by the scholar Clive Scott,

the distinguishing characteristic of the caption is that it is already a

step away from the image towards its assimilation by, and interpre-
tation through, language. The caption is spoken; it is an interven-
tion, a response forestalling the response of the viewer. (Scott 1999:
49)

As art-historian and critic Rosalind Krauss claims,

INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 163

it is clear that although the photograph registers reality and isolates

the fragments, which are to be made visible, the space isolated from
the image is not always significant by itself. It therefore requires a
double trace provided by the written text. (Krauss 1985: 131)

Moreover, Sontag states that,

the caption adds a further frame, which in reality proves to be a

boundary: it creates an additional space, which guides the interpre-
tation, influencing perception to such an extent that it can reverse
its interpretation. And so the same image can be taken equally well
to portray an ally or a traitor, a peasant or a brigand, thus confirm-
ing that images can be read in different and even conflicting ways
depending on the context in which they are inserted, which also de-
termines their possible uses. (Sontag 1979: 62)

Captions helped to create and stress the orientalist perception of countries

like Iran in the Western mind and they were a complement to the photo-
graphs that definitely resulted in them being classified as “types”. Captions
play an important role in making the conception of the other, in the process
of “othering”.
There are some scholars who have argued that Western photographers
did not only shape reality through the prism of Orientalism, but that there
are also examples of local photographers, like Nāser al-Din Shah himself,
whose work was influenced by the Western orientalist painting tradition
and subsequently by Orientalist photography. As I already mentioned
briefly in chapter 3, this phenomenon has been named “self-orientalizing”
by Behdad, who says that,

by this term he means the practice of seeing and representing one-

self as Europe’s Other. Having internalized the discourse and prac-
tices of Orientalism, Nāser al-Din Shah depicts himself and his wi-
ves in the same stereotypical way as European artists represented
Middle Eastern women and the oriental despot. (Behdad 2001: 148)

A portrait of Anis al-Dowle, one of Nāser al-Din Shah’s favorites, taken

by himself (fig. 94) already introduced in chapter 3 of this book, is remi-
niscent of the reclining odalisques typical of Orientalists painters, the ex-
ample that Behdad has used to illustrate the concept of self-orientalism.6
Another example that could be used to illustrate this is a photograph taken
by Rezā Akkāsbāshi in which two women (Shirazi-ye Kuchak and
Farangi) are depicted drinking (maybe) wine and hugging a man identified
as Āghā Salmān (fig. 152). Nevertheless, I have never seen any other ex-
amples of this kind of image so nothing can be concluded on this delicate
164 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

topic. Behdad’s statement is, in that sense, debatable. Behdad further dis-
cussed the topic of “self-orientalism”, and states that:

a general aesthetic transformation took place in how the West repre-

sented the Orient and how the Orient represented itself. This aes-
thetic transformation, though governed by new rules and techniques,
constantly returned to and repeated the subjects, aesthetic con-
sciousness, and formal sensibilities of the previous mode of artistic
representation, i.e., painting. (Behdad 2001: 142)

If we follow his thoughts on this topic, we may conclude that Orientalist

paintings not only influenced Western photography in the nineteenth cen-
tury, but also influenced local photography. ”Orientalism, therefore,” says
Behdad,

should not be viewed as a unilateral artistic, intellectual, and politi-

cal force but instead as a particular system of ideas, aesthetic ex-
pressions, and intellectual practices that was internalized by
“Orientals”. (Behdad 2001: 148)

This paradoxical situation also has been pointed out by Pinney who asks
himself what the consequences are, for instance, of the documented fact
that “collectors of North African, Near and Middle Eastern descent domi-
nate the market for orientalist art?”, as has been claimed by the art histor-
ian Roger Benjamin.7 Pinney goes on to argue that “those paintings, which
Said and Linda Nochlin8 have argued projected an image of largely nega-
tive alterity, are now eagerly consumed by those whose reality these
images so distorted” (Pinney 2003:2-3). Benjamin’s research on those who
market these paintings, indicates that a nostalgic invocation of “‘indigen-
ous identity through images of the pre-colonial past’ is involved, together
with a new sense of positive empowerment expressed through the acquisi-
tion and thus redefinition of western cultural documents” (Benjamin 1997:
34-35). A paradoxical situation in which everybody is implicated: the
photographer, the person depicted, the observer and the collector. Nāser al-
Din Shah was a pioneer in displaying his own private and inner world.
There are few sovereigns like him who have expressed their thoughts
through artistic media like illustrations, photography, private letters and
diaries. It is debatable that by using a precise example (Anis al-Dowle in a
reclining odalisque-like pose) we can extend this approach to all his work.
There is a remarkable amount of photographs that Nāser al-Din Shah left
of all his wives and most of them were depicted sitting on chairs in a fron-
tal pose, just like those typical of the Victorian portraiture. Even if Nāser
al-Din Shah would have internalized such Orientalist discourse, we cannot
be completely sure of what his real intentions were.
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 165

In clear contrast to the aforementioned representations of Iranian women

in photography, it is striking to note that in most of the portraits of parents
holding children in their arms or laps in nineteenth-century Iranian photo-
graphy that I have gathered, usually the men are holding the children (see
figs. 21 and 22)! This contrasts with the fact that, in real life, the main oc-
cupation of the women may well have been taking care of children and
holding them in their laps most of the day. Actually, the only photograph
that I have found were you can somehow note the presence of a woman
holding a child is an ambiguous presence indeed (fig. 153): a couple of
boys have been depicted, the youngest one being held by two ghost-like
hands that are hidden behind the chadored chair in which he is sitting. A
striking image that makes the restricted presence of women in portrait
photography in nineteenth century in Iran even more obvious. I have also
seen several photographs of court eunuchs holding court children in their
arms, like one photograph taken in the Bodouir studio (fig. 154), in which
two eunuchs are holding two babies and two other children are sitting on a
bench.
In sum, Qajar Persia was not an exception in having some orientalist
traits in the representation of foreign societies in nineteenth-century
Western photography. This orientalism could be found both in single
photographs and in publications were photographs had a main role in the
construction of the image of the country, of the image-world of Persia.
Nevertheless, there was also an important corpus of photographic material
from a documentary standpoint that was completely free of any orientalist
connotation and that constitutes precious research material for historians,
sociologists and anthroplogists, as we shall see further on in this chapter.

5.3 Interaction between Western and Iranian

photographers

In this section I will introduce the Western photographers that were active
in Persia in the nineteenth century and focus only on the ones whose influ-
ence on Iranian photographers may have been important. An important to-
pic to explore is in which way they could have influenced the aesthetics of
local photographers. Especially relevant is a discussion of how this influ-
ence might have changed the four topics explored in the previous chapters:
visual laterality, text/calligraphy, pose and space. In order to achieve this, it
is essential to know who the Iranian photographers working with Western
photographers were. There were two possible agents through which this in-
teraction could take place: the first were Western photographers who tra-
veled and/or lived in Iran (some of whom came to work as photographers
in the court of Nāser al-Din Shah); the second were Iranian photographers
who traveled and/or lived in Europe (some of whom, like Abdollāh Mirzā
166 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Qajar, went to Europe precisely to learn photographic technique). Both will

be discussed.

Western photographers in Iran

Jules Richard being the first Western photographer to work as a teacher in
Iran, he may have been an influential photographer for Iranians, as I have
already mentioned in the brief historical introduction.
There were around thirty Western photographers active in Iran in the
nineteenth century, but for my research the most relevant ones are the
French Francois Carhlian, the Italian Luigi Montabone and the Georgian
Antoin Sevruguin. The reason for this is that they were the ones whose
work most influenced the aesthetic of local photographers. To prove this is
the aim of the present section.
The French photographer Carlhian was active in Iran in 1858. There is
an interesting album hosted at the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques-
Guimet, where photographs taken by Carlhian, the Italian photographers
Pesce and Gianuzzi are shown together with some watercolors collected by
the French colonel Brongiart. He became a teacher at the Dār al-Fonun and
he did some experiments with cyanotype. Most likely Rezā Akkāsbāshi
learned this technique from him. Carlhian was probably responsible for the
introduction of Western props and paraphernalia in the Iranian photogra-
pher’s studio, as well as for the typical Victorian pose: frontal and hieratic.
The Italian photographer Luigi Montabone introduced hand-colored
photography in Iran. The photographs taken during his Italian mission
were exhibited at the international exhibition in Paris in 1867 with big suc-
cess. He produced the already mentioned and well-known album titled
Ricordo del Viaggio in Persia della Missione Italiana 1862. In the words
of Tahmasbpour,

the aesthetics and style introduced by Montabone had a profound

influence on Iranian photographers working at the imperial court.
To date, no earlier examples of colored photographs in the Golestān
Palace other than the photographs of Montabone are identified and
so we can safely argue that Montabone’s photographs mark a revo-
lution in Iranian photography. (Tahmasbpour 2007: 17)

A good example of this kind of photograph is the one that depicts two
Iranian military men whose clothes have been finely hand-painted with
watercolors (fig. 155, see full color section). As Tahmasbpour states, the
Iranian photographers that were active in hand-coloring were Rezā
Akkāsbāshi, Mirzā Ahmad Akkās, Mirzā Ebrāhim Khān Akkāsbāshi and
Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar. Tahmasbpour further states that, “besides, the vig-
netting used for the portraits taken of the Shah were novel too and were
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 167

copied by Iranian photographers in the ensuing years” (Tahmasbpour

2007: 17). There is a hand-colored and vignetted portrait that Montabone
took of Nāser al-Din Shah (fig. 156, see full color section) that is a good
example of the two techniques that Montabone introduced in Iran. Many
Iranian photographers adopted the vignetting technique, among others
Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Mirzā Hoseyn Ali Akkās, Mirzā Ahmad Akkās, Āqā
Yosuf Akkās, Manucher Khān Akkās, Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar (fig. 157) and
Amir Jalil al-Dowle Qajar (fig. 158). One of the Iranian photographers
who was most likely influenced by Montabone was Rezā Akkāsbāshi.
There is one photograph taken by Montabone in which a group of Iranian
sitters from the court are depicted (fig. 159). Among them we can find
Rezā Akkāsbāshi standing (the third one from the left), portrayed in 1862
when he was already active as a photographer in the court. Actually his at-
titude, among all the men depicted, is the most conscious and theatrical
one: he is the one who is completely aware of the camera and is playing
both with the camera and the photographer. In this photograph we can
guess the relationship that these two photographers may have had. This
copy of this photograph is placed in an album hosted at the Golestān
Palace Library, but in that one Nāser al-Din Shah identified and wrote the
name of the persons depicted in Farsi, and also wrote: “Taken by the
Italian photographer at Niavaran”.
It is widely accepted among photo historians that Hoeltzer and
Sevruguin are two of the more prolific and interesting photographers that
were active in Iran in the nineteenth century. Both have left a remarkable
photographic legacy yet to be studied in a systematic way. Hoeltzer’s work
may have been (consciously or not) nourished by both his cultural back-
ground and Persian visual arts aesthetics, due to the fact that he lived in
Iran for a long time. Surprisingly, the Iranian photo historian Parisa
Damandan claims that “his knowledge of Iranian culture and history was
so limited that it stuns any educated person of our age”’ (Damandan 2004:
21). Even if he lived in Iran for a long time, the fact that he was an ama-
teur photographer who basically worked for his own interest and enjoy-
ment, make the hypothesis that his work was not influential to Iranian
photographers very plausible. Nevertheless, as a consequence of 30 years
in Iran, his work is remarkable especially for its anthropological approach.
Sevruguin was a well-known professional and commercial Orientalist
photographer. His work’s aesthetics were remarkable. His photography
finds itself halfway between staged portrait and ethnographic photography.
As the Iranian photo historian Rezā Sheikh points out,

Sevruguin’s prowess as a stage director with a painter’s instincts

was best revealed within the confines of his studio. To assure better
light he often photographed in his house’s courtyard or the military
procession grounds near his studio. (Sheikh 1999: 56)
168 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Sevruguin’s work was very well known by Western travelers and was often
used in their travelogues. In some cases, the writer would acknowledge the
author of the photographs but in other cases would not. One of the most
shocking examples is the April 1921 National Geographic Magazine,
Modern Persia and its Capital, that I analyzed in the previous section, and
where many pictures taken by Sevruguin appeared with another author’s
name (Faye Fischer). Unfortunately, in those days copyright was still
science fiction. His work seems to be influenced by the Russian realist
painters like Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844-1930) and the English photogra-
pher Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879). The pose, facial expression and
treatment of light in Cameron’s portraits resemble Sevruguin’s portraits of
dervishes (figs. 160 and 161). In none of these photographs does the sitter
look directly into the camera. All the men portrayed here seem to be in
deep inner thought, with a clear mystical appearance in all of them that has
been masterly achieved through the use of light and the staging of the sit-
ter’s attitude.
The next photograph by Sevruguin (fig. 162) nicely illustrates the pic-
torialist approach of this painter photographer. Taken around 1880, the
composition of this image is no doubt very avant-guarde for its time and
is very different from the archetypical Victorian portrait: frontal, hieratic
and still. Looked at from a distance it shows a perfect balance between
light and composition, a perfect diagonal and turning movement of the
body that recalls the paintings of Ingres, all of which help to create an at-
mosphere of harmony. To make it even more interesting, the eyes of the
sitter, which are turned away from the observer, are reflected in the mirror
in front of him. Only people who are familiar with Persian culture will re-
cognize the person depicted in the picture as a luti, a member of a tradi-
tional Iranian wrestling and athletic club known as zurkhāne. Apparently,
lutis shave their heads when preparing for the annual passion play to com-
memorate the Shi’i imam Hussein, who died a martyr’s death at the hands
of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680 AD. In an act of self-mutilation known as
ghame-zani or tigh-zani, they inflict heavily bleeding wounds on their
shaved heads, re-enacting the sufferings of Imam Hoseyn. Later on, while
doing research on the archives of nineteenth-century Western photography
in Iran at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, I was surprised to find a
second image (fig. 163), a preliminary stage of the first one, that shares the
three most important and characteristic elements with the first picture: it is
also taken from the back, with a mirror, and the Persian style of haircut.
However, it is obvious that the composition and the light bear no compari-
son to the first photograph, the previous one. These two photographs prove
that Sevruguin was indeed a stage director in his own studio.
Type photography was a genre practiced by Sevruguin and in the collec-
tion we can find many images (like fig. 164). Here I would like to mention
the research conducted by the German Iranologist and curator Frederike
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 169

Voigt. She states that this kind of photography of types influenced the tra-
ditional tile painting in nineteenth century in Iran, with Sevruguin’s photo-
graphs serving as a model for those tiles.9 There is one photograph where
an Iranian woman is depicted in a squatting position with a straightforward
title written under the photograph: Persian Toilet (fig. 112, already ana-
lyzed from another point of view in chapter 3). Another appealing photo-
graph is that of a naked Iranian woman (fig. 113, also analyzed in chapter
3). These two photographs, emblematic of “Otherness”, are at the
Ethnology Museum of Leiden, which hosts a well-preserved collection of
Sevruguin. These two images reveal Sevruguin’s Orientalist approach bet-
ter than others. Nude women are a recurrent topic in studio portraits of the
nineteenth century, no matter in what country. This matter deserves closer
attention because the photographer is non-Iranian and the woman an
Iranian lady. The Algerian writer Malek Alloula has written the most re-
markable analysis of postcards of “exotic” women that were sent to the
Western public. In his book The Colonial Harem10, he collected, arranged
and annotated picture postcards of Algerian women produced and sent by
the French during the first three decades of the last century:

the mundane use of the postcards – short messages to family and

friends – make the portrayals of Algerian women all the more insi-
dious. Who were those women posing for these kinds of images?
Were they the pure fantasy of the photographer’s mind? ….
The photographer comes up with more complacent counterparts to
these inaccessible Algerian women. (Alloula 1986: 17)

Thus, as the photo historian and curator Nissan N. Perez stated,

genre photographers faced another problem with the lack of avail-

ability of models and the unwillingness of the local population, ow-
ing to their religious taboos or simple prejudices, to be photo-
graphed. Many of the women photographed in evocative poses were
no doubt prostitutes. Other models appear to be blind and unaware
of what was happening around them. (Perez 1988: 107)

Perez uses a striking example of a literally blind Nubian woman with ex-
posed breasts taken by the Turkish brothers and photographers of Armenian
origin Abdollāh Frères (fig. 165). Further, he presents two photographs by
the French photographer Félix Bonfils of the same person identified in one
as the chief rabbi of Jerusalem and in the other as a cotton carder.11 Alloula
also presents a similar example in his book in a set of three postcards in
which the same model, wearing the same outfit, photographed by the same
photographer at the same location, represents in turn a “young Bedouin wo-
man”, a “young woman from the South” and a “young kabyl woman”!12
170 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

One of the peculiarities that I find more revealing of the nineteenth-cen-

tury Western mind when faced with “exotic” women from North African
and Asiatic countries, is the ambiguity between modest reserve and whis-
pered beckoning, between the veil that reminds us of the seclusion of the
female in those countries and naked parts of their bodies, which is almost
always the breast. There are many examples of this kind of dichotomic
images that play between hiding and revealing. I have selected two of them
here: the first one is titled Moorish Bust and belongs to the series of post-
cards “Scenes and Types” (fig. 166). The second one is a postcard full of
fantastic surrealism (fig. 167). The caption of the photograph reads:
“Arabian woman with the Yachmak”. I have found some examples of this
kind in nineteenth-century Iranian photography, even if more discrete, in-
terestingly in the work of Nāser al-Din Shah (see, for example, figs. 110
and 168), where two of his wives have been depicted with fully covered
heads, but with exposed belly or/and breasts. I have seen quite a significant
number of photographs where his wives wear a transparent blouse that
fully reveals the breast underneath it: see figure 110. It is important to note
that the Shah was the only photographer that took that kind of photo-
graphs; they were only meant to be enjoyed by himself and his wives. I be-
lieve that there is some kind of ludic component in those images: he did
not produce the photographs for the market; they were just meant to be
items of private contemplation, to his own enjoyment.
W. Ordén, as I briefly noted in the introduction to the history of photo-
graphy in Iran, was one of the most mysterious and elusive photographers
active in Central Asia at the end of the nineteenth century. His work pro-
duced in the Khānates of Khiva, Bukhara and Khokand is well-known, but
to date, it was not known that he also traveled through Persia at the end of
the nineteenthcentury and that he took many photographs of landscapes, ar-
chitecture and people there. He must have been very fond of collages,
since there are many in his collection and some of them depict Persian
types (figs. 169 and 170). An extreme case of this, not depicting Persian
types, but good to illustrate my argument, is a set of multiple collages of a
rich variety of Central Asian types (figs. 171). More interesting for us is
the collage the Oriental Princes at their Dignitaries (fig. 172), found in
another collection (Anahita Gallery, Santa Fe), in which we can see in a
central position a portrait of Nāser al-Din Shah surrounded by several im-
portant high-ranked men of the court.
After having analyzed the Ordén Collection of the nineteenth-century
photographs from Central Asia and Persia hosted at the Ethnology
Museum in Vienna (amounting to a total of 700), I perceive his viewpoint
to be quite an anthropological one: by the care that he displays in arran-
ging the collages of types and the information given of each one of them
individually; by the repetition of certain subjects/topics, such as the ceme-
teries and also foreign populations (communities) of people in each city;
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 171

by the number of art objects and artefacts and the care arranging the image.
It seems to me that he was making a great effort to give as much visual in-
formation as possible (and therefore, his photographs remain a wealth of
information about the material culture of the countries that he visited),
complemented by captions rich in factual information about the people,
places and objects depicted. His work constitutes a good example to illus-
trate what I stated at the beginning of this section, namely the fact that
some Western photographers have left a rich legacy of photographs with a
documentary, ethnological and/or anthropological approach.
It is very unlikely that his work had an influence of any kind on Iranian
photographers, since no other document referring to him has been found
anywhere yet. Further research is highly desirable. I am currently research-
ing on this photographer, jointly with the american photo historian Heather
S. Sonntag, expert on 19th century Central Asian photography. The result
of this joint work will be a travelling exhibition and catalogue.
In retrospect, I can conclude that Western photographers active in Iran
in the nineteenth century, produced more photography with an ethnogra-
phical or anthropological approach (or documentary photography) than
staged Orientalist photography that was basically produced by Sevruguin.
The market for those Orientalist photographs never was as established and
developed in Iran as it was in other Middle Eastern countries or North
African countries, such as Algeria.

Iranian photographers in Europe

Several Iranian photographers traveled to Europe to learn the photographic
technique with Western teachers. Rezā Akkāsbāshi traveled to Vienna in
1873, on a mission with Nāser al-Din Shah during his first trip to Europe,
but he surely got Western influences already before this trip, since in 1863,
he was already being trained as a photographer in the court of Nāser al-
Din Shah under the guidance of the French photographer Carlhian.
Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar attended the Dār al-Fonun and in 1869, traveled to
Europe to study photography. He lived for a year and a half in Paris and
for three years in Salzburg. Both of these photographers were court photo-
graphers and the influence that Western photographers had on the aes-
thetics of their work is noticeable in contrast to that of other more local (or
bazaar) Iranian photographers: the pose (especially of the hands and head),
the use of Western studio paraphernalia, the hand-coloring of photographs
and the vignetting technique. Actually, one of the most aesthetically pleas-
ing photographs that I have seen from nineteenth-century Iranian photogra-
phers is a lithograph hand-over-painted by Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar (fig. 173,
see full color section), where we can see a very young Nāser al-Din Shah.
Certainly, Nāser al-Din Shah was himself one of the Iranian photographers
who was more exposed to Western aesthetics. He traveled to Paris several
172 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

times and met the French photographer Gaspar Felix Tournachon (1820-
1910), better known as Nadar, who took at least one portrait of the Shah
around 1873 (online). As we can read in the Shah’s travelogue The Diary
of H.M. the Shah of Persia during his tour through Europe in A.D. 1873,

Nadar, a talented Parisian photographer, had an audience and took

our photograph. He used to make flights in hot air balloons; but has
now dropped that fancy, and occupies himself with photography. He
is a pleasant and corpulent man. (Nāser al-Din Shah 1873: 237)

I have also seen a portrait taken by Nadar of Farrokh Khān Amin al-Molk
(later known as Amin al-Dowle), who went to Paris in 1857 as an envoy
of the Persian court (see Gosling, Niegel, Nadar, Secker & Warburg,
London, p. 117) to sign the first treaty between Persia and Germany. The
influence of this photographer on the photographic work of the Shah is
clear (especially the hand-pose used consistently by Nadar: one hand under
the coat or jacket). See, for instance, figure 109 introduced in chapter 3, in
which he and all the women depicted there show the same Nadar-pose. In
contrast to this, we do not find this kind of pose at all in the work of
Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar, although we do find it in Rezā Akkāsbāshi (see fig.
174).
The Shah was potrayed also by several European photographers during
his travels through Europe in 1873, notably by the well-known Austrian fe-
male photographer Adele Perlmutter-Heilperin (active in Vienna after
1862).13 On the back of the picture (fig. 175) we can see both the stamp
and signature of Adele’s studio and the date, 1874. She was the most suc-
cessful female photographer in Vienna at that time and one of the most fa-
mous portraits of her was taken by the Austrian photographer Fritz
Luckhardt (1843-1984)14, who was to become the mentor of the Iranian
court photographer Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar during his 5-year long stay in
Austria to pursue his studies.
Another important Iranian photographer was Ali Khān Vali Hākem,
whose work I shall analyze further on this chapter. Ali Khān Vali’s photo-
graph album documenting his career as governor at various places in
Azerbaijan (Northwest Persia) between 1879 and 1896, is of the highest
quality and character. Although the earliest photographs in the album are
portraits of Nāser al-Din Shah taken in 1862-3, it would appear that the
rest of the photographs date from Ali Khān’s 1879 posting to Maragha,
and the following years. The last date in the text is 1895-96. It contains no
less than 1,400 photographs on 439 pages, that include representations of
Shi’ite saints, portraits of Nāser al-Din Shah, Ali Khān’s family, and all
kinds of people and places he encountered during his career as governor.
The photographs are captioned in almost all cases. Moreover, page after
page is covered with a continuous narrative of his career, written around
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 173

the photographs. In the work of this photographer we can clearly find ele-
ments that are borrowed from the Victorian portrait, but also elements that
come from the Persian cultural background of the photographer. I will pre-
sent some of his work in the next section, devoted to the topic of
hybridity.

Court photographers versus bazaar photographers. Art and craft

It would be interesting to see if there was a noticeable difference in the
aesthetic approach in photography between the Iranian court photographers
and professional studio photographers living in big cities, on the one hand,
and those who lived in smaller cities or towns or worked in bazaars, far
away from the court, as I believe is the case. My current hypothesis (that
will have to be tested with further research) is that the aesthetics of these
court photographers, who were more exposed to the leading Western model
of representation in photography (the Victorian model), was remarkable
different from those photographers exposed to the age-old master-appren-
tice system, what I name here bazaar photographers. The aim of this future
research would be to try to show with images if this hypothesis holds true,
and to reflect on an interaction between the traditional Iranian learning sys-
tem based on guilds and the new system directly influenced by Western
academic models. As stated by Maryam Ekhtiar in her insightful article
“From Workshop and Bazaar to Academy”, for centuries in Iran, “art” was
considered indistinguishable from “handicraft”15:

Traditionally, the activities of artisans and craftsmen in Iran were

tied to the operation of guilds (asnāf) and workshops (kārkhāne).
Whether employed by the royal workshops and guilds (asnāf-e sha-
bi) or by the local bazaars, artists and craftsmen worked and trained
within the system. The kitābkhāne, or royal library workshop, had
functioned within the parameters of the Royal Household and was
considered one of its domestic departments. Despite Iran’s increas-
ing interaction with Russia and Europe during the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, the practices of the royal ateliers at this
time still bore a striking resemblance to those of earlier periods.
(Ehktiar 1998: 51)

Islamic art historian Sheila Canby argues that,

while individual artists, occasionally with the help of an assistant,

designed and executed the actual illustrations in Persian manu-
scripts, the complete production of an illustrated book could involve
many people, all of whom would be employed within the library or
book-making atelier of a major, often royal patron. The director of
174 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

the project would decide which episodes of the narrative should be

illustrated. If the borders were to be flecked with gold, specialist
gold-sprinklers would perform their task while the paper was still
wet. Then, once the sheets were burnished, the scribe would copy
the text, leaving space for paintings and illuminations as instructed
by the director. The painter(s) would next proceed, followed by illu-
minators and gilders, whose intricate decorations adorned the fron-
tispieces, end-pages and chapter-headings. These artists were also
responsible for ruling and framing the lines that demarcated text
from paintings and separated lines of poetry. (Canby 1993: 19)

European photographers became teachers of the Iranian court photogra-

phers, as I have already explained in the historical overview at the begin-
ning of the book. Analyzing photographs taken by court photographers,
like Rezā Akkāsbāshi, and contrasting them with the previous ones, we
can see a clear Western influence, more specifically that of the Victorian
portrait tradition in photography: hieratic, still and with the typical studio
paraphernalia (background, chairs, columns and carpet). Next to this
Western influence, court photography was also influenced by Qajar paint-
ing, as has been researched by scholars such as Diba, especially concerning
the objects held by the sitter and the pose (including attitude towards the
camera, normally a self-conscious one).
Apparently, court painting was more rooted in tradition following the
guild-working models, whereas court photography was more exposed, in
general, to Western models from its very beginning and for self-explana-
tory reasons: it could be that photography, being a Western discovery, was
immediately accepted and admired by the Persian kings and was therefore
accepted without any reserves with regard to the way of learning and
teaching that came with the photographic practice. On the other hand, it
would be important to explore if bazaar photographers (or photographers
not related to the court) approached photography with the more traditional
guild system. This belief is reinforced by the fact that classic Iranian histor-
ical texts about photography and Iranian photographers, such as “The be-
ginning of the craft of photography and stereotyping in Iran” written by
Iqbal Yaghma’i16, which considers photography as a craft in the very title.
Actually, an important question to take into consideration is how Iranians
received a modern Western invention such as photography, and how it be-
came accepted. In my search for the roots and early uses of photography in
Iran, the first thing I had to consider was the name that the Iranians gave
to this new medium: Aks. As stated by Afshar,

the word aks has long been used in Persian in the general sense of
the reflection in water, mirrors, etc. As he states further, the terms
aks and Akkās (photographer) also have a more technical use in two
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 175

sixteenth-century texts dealing with miniatures and illustrations.

Both passages refer to the same artist, Mawlana Kepek of Heart.
The first is an introduction to an album in the Topkapi Museum (da-
ted 1576-7) published under the tittle of Bustan-I Khatt: the other
rare talent of the era was Mawlana Kepek, the Akkās of Heart, who
made aks (stencils) of pictures and line drawings, and in the making
of colored stencils and gold sprinkling and the use of different col-
ors and artistic designs (tarrahí) and calligraphy copying (muthan-
na) has excelled all human beings. (Afshar 1992B: 267-268)

It seems that Iranians used a word that was already in their language to
name the new invention. This contrasts with the fact that the English word
photography that comes from the Greek photos, meaning “light”, and gra-
phia, meaning “drawing” or “writing”, was invented exclusively for the
new medium. Interestingly in Japan something similar happened to what
happened in Iran: as stated by the Japanese critic and art historian Kohtaro
Iizawa,

the Japanese gave to the new medium the word shashin, which is
derived from the characters for “reproduce” and “true”, meaning, in
other words, the process of making a true reproduction, or “true
copy”. The word shashin was used in Japan even before the arrival
of photography. It was used in the Chinese school of painting,
which had a great influence on Japanese artists, especially with re-
gard to the techniques of portraiture. (Iazawa 1994: 38)

Female photographers
What about female photographers? As already mentioned in the historical
introduction, we know of three Western women active in Persia in the
nineteenth century, the French Dieulafoy17 (active from 1881), the English
Bishop-Bird18 (active 1890) and Bell19 (active in Iran from 1892). All of
them were traveler-amateur photographers and their work did not have any
influence on local photographers. Dieulafoy married Marcel Dieulafoy in
1870 and joined him in the army of the Loire during the Franco-Prussian
war of 1870. From that time, she adopted a masculine costume and short
haircut in her extensive travels. When Marcel obtained an assignment in
Persia, she decided to accompany him. She covered the whole Persian itin-
erary of the voyage (1881-82) on horseback. She managed to penetrate into
the andaruns and provided us with vivid descriptions of the lives of se-
cluded women of all ranks. Besides the main monuments and archeological
remains, she photographed and processed on the spot many portraits of
men, women and various social groups. All drawings and engravings
176 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

illustrating her travel accounts and Marcel Dieulafoy’s publications were

made from these photographs.
The first Iranian women to acquire the technique of photography were
most probably some of Nāser al-Din Shah’s wives, who approached the
new medium as an entertainment. They especially enjoyed the dark room’s
work. Asraf al-Saltane (1901-1953) was one of the Iranian pioneer female
photographers. She was born in Kermanshah but moved to Tehran when
she married Mohammad Hasan Khān E‘temād al-Saltane, one of Nāser al-
Din Shah’s ministers. In the family of Mo’ire al-Mamālek, there were also
some female photographers. Asraf al-Soltane did not have children and
used her time mostly to learn history, medicine, French and the technique
of photography with Shahzade Soltān Mohammad Mirzā Wallet. After the
death of her husband, she married again and moved to Mashhad. She was
a very unusual woman for that time, who lead a life devoted to learning
and experiencing things that were not the norm among Iranian women at
the turn of the twentieth century. Eight years after her death, the Iranian
historian Soltān Ahmad Dowlatshā’i Yomhan-Dowle wrote about her life
and work, and that constitutes the best known source of information about
this pioneer female photographer.20
There were two well-known Iranian female photographers active in the
nineteenth century, Fāteme Soltān Khānom (wife of Mirzā Hasan Ali
Akkās) and Osrat Khānom (wife of Āqā Yosuf Akkāsbāshi). They were
sisters and the wives of two Iranian photographers, as was almost always
the case with female photographers in the nineteenth century. As
Rosenblum explains, most frequently, a woman would help her spouse in
the photography business and then take it over after his death.21
Rosenblum further describes that as the techniques for producing portrait
photographs changed, women were called upon for retouching as well as
coloring. This skill, taught in schools, remained women’s work well into
the twentieth century, perhaps because, as one writer put it in the mid-
1880s, a woman skilled in retouching “would have secured higher wages if
she had been a man”.22 Nāser al-Din Shah’s wives were helping him to put
together the albums of photographs that he took at court, mostly portraits
of his wives and children.
The wife and daughter of Sevruguin are also among the first female
photographers that were active in Iran in the late nineteenth-century and
early twentieth century. They were both working at Sevruguin’s studio and
took it over after his death, in accordance with Rosenblum’s claim.
In Shiraz, two daughters of Mirzā Hasan Chehrehnegār known as Aziz-e
Jahān and Habib-e Zamān, opened the first studio in this city specialized
in portraits of women. They became serious professional photographers.
Iranian female photographers in the nineteenth century is a fascinating
topic that has to date been underresearched. It is especially important to
undertake such a research since female photographers mainly took pictures
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 177

of women, and such a research will probably give new insights into the to-
pic of the representation of women in nineteenth-century photography. The
leading photo historian Khadije Mohammadi Nameghi has done extensive
research on the topic of photographing women in the Qajar Era and her
work is an important referent to anybody wanting to undertake further re-
search on this topic (see bibliography for references to her published
work). An article about the topic of photographing women in the Qajar
Period and through the 1930s and about female photographers (by
Khadijeh Mohammadi Nameghi and Carmen Pérez González) will be pub-
lished in a special issue of the journal History of Photography devoted to
Iranian photography in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (January
2013, see bibliography).

Evolution of visual laterality, relation text-image, pose and space

Among the topics considered in the four previous chapters of this book,
the ones in which Western influence may be most noticeable or relevant
are “visual laterality” and “pose”.
The visual-laterality phenomenon may have changed in the course of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My research points to the fact that there
are more exceptions to the visual-laterality composition (mirror-like) of
Iranian photographs towards the beginning of the twentieth century, when
Western influences may have been stronger and more noticeable.
Nevertheless, to date I cannot conclude anything solid about this, and it re-
mains an open research topic.
As for pose, the most important Western influence on the traditional
Iranian pose was caused by the use of the chair in the studio paraphernalia.
The change of pose from the traditional kneeling pose to a more wester-
nized sitting position is clearly noticeable in nineteenth-century Iranian
photography. Next to this, the court photographers, such as Rezā
Akkāsbāshi or Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar, were by far more influenced by the
Western studio paraphernalia than bazaar or local photographers: in the in-
dividual portraits taken by court photographers we find more sitters on
chairs than in the case of non-court photographers, whose photographs
show normally kneeling sitters. This difference disappears, interestingly,
when we consider group portrait photographs: in this case, the sitters are
almost always kneeling! The reason for this may be that there were not en-
ough chairs in the photographer’s studio. See, for instance, Rezā
Akkāsbāshi’s photographs of kneeling mullahs (figs. 137 and 138) from
the previous chapter. Probably the traditional poses of the hands (like the
modest one, holding hands and resting them on the sitter’s lap, or holding
with one hand a tasbi or some other traditional object, see figure 75) were
influenced, and changed, into some other more westernized poses, like the
one that Nadar made popular: one hand under the coat. One of the typical
178 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

Victorian hand-poses that also entered the Iranian photographer’s studio is

that of the hands resting in parallel on each one of the legs (see figure
103). Another traditional pose inherited, as I have already pointed out in
chapter 3, from the Qajar portraiture tradition is the one of a man sitting
on a chair and holding a sword (see figures 14, 62, 95 and 96, see full col-
or section).
Even if Iranian photographers adopted the props and studio parapherna-
lia typical of the Victorian-style studios, they usually adapted those ele-
ments in a more local way. For example, the background: there are local
backgrounds used by some Iranian photographers that are more patterned
than the Western realist ones. There are even photographers who use a car-
pet as background.
In sum, Carlhian, Montabone and Sevruguin were the most influential
Western photographers in Iran. Carhlian was responsible for the introduc-
tion of the Victorian pose (hieratical and frontal) and studio paraphernalia
among Iranian court photographers; Montabone introduced hand-colored
photography and the technique of vignetting; and Sevruguin’s pictorialism
in photography was also a fundamental referent for those Iranian photogra-
phers more exposed to foreign influences, as court or successful profes-
sional photographers who ran studios in Tehran or other big cities.

5.4 Hybridity versus Appropriation

Due to the double cultural influence that some of the nineteenth-century

Iranian photographers had during their active life as photographers, their
work presents, as I shall show shortly with several photographs, a combi-
nation of elements belonging to each of the two cultures. I have spent
some time trying to find an adequate term to define this property of the
photographs produced by these Iranian photographers. It was difficult to
find a good term to name the phenomenon: hybridity, acculturation, inter-
culturality, assemblage and appropriation were the terms considered during
that process. For a long time I considered the term “hybridity” as the one
to clearly explain the concept. Nevertheless, I disregardered it later in favor
of “appropriation”. In the following pages I discuss the reasons for taking
that decision. Iranian photographers made elements found in nineteenth-
century Western photography their own: they not only adopted studio para-
phernalia but also the attitude and pose of the sitter.
Hybridity is one of the most widely employed and most disputed terms
in postcolonial theory. It refers to the creation of new transcultural forms
within the contact zone made by colonization. The term hybridity has been
most recently associated with the work of the Indian theorist of postcoloni-
alism Homi K. Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer and colonized rela-
tions stress their interdependence and the mutual construction of their sub-
jectivities. Bhabha states that all cultural statements and systems are
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 179

constructed in a space that he calls “the third space of enunciation”.

Cultural identity always emerges in this contradictory and ambivalent
space, which in Bhabha’s opinion makes the claim to a hierarchical “pur-
ity” of cultures untenable. For him, the recognition of this ambivalent
space of cultural identity may help us overcome the exoticism of cultural
diversity in favor of the recognition of an empowering hybridity. Within
this, cultural difference may operate. As Bhabha said:

It is significant that the productive capacities of this Third Space

have a colonial or postcolonial provenance. For a willingness to
descend into that alien territory (…) may open the way to concep-
tualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of
multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription
and articulation of culture’s hybridity. (Bhabha 1994: 38)

Here it is important to remark that some scholars, such as the art historian
John Clark, have incisively noted that sometimes postcolonialist discourses
were built on virtual ignorance of the local archives it would be thought
they had consulted.23 He further states that,

according to the Scottish writer and historian William Dalrymple, in

all the output of Subaltern Studies not one PhD has been written
from the Mutinity Papers24, the basic archival collection, nor a ma-
jor study systematically explored its contents.25

The use of the term hybridity has been widely criticized, since it usually
implies negating and neglecting the imbalance and inequality of the power
relations it references. By stressing the transformative cultural, linguistic
and political impacts on both the colonized and the colonizer, it has been
regarded as replicating assimilationist policies by masking or “whitewash-
ing” cultural differences.26 The idea of hybridity also underlines other at-
tempts to stress the mutuality of cultures in the colonial and postcolonial
process in expressions of syncreticity, cultural synergy27 and transcultura-
tion. As explained by scholars on postcolonial theory Bill Ascroft, Gareth
Griffiths and Helen Tiffin,

The criticism of the term referred to above stems from the percep-
tion that theories which stress mutuality necessarily downplay op-
positionality, and increase continuing post-colonial dependence.
There is, however, nothing in the idea of hybridity as such that sug-
gests that mutuality negates the hierarchical nature of the imperial
process or that it involves the idea of an equal exchange. (Ascroft,
Griffiths & Tiffin 1998: 119)
180 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

This is actually the way in which some proponents of decolonization and

anticolonialism have interpreted its current usage in colonial discourse the-
ory. It has also been subject to critique as part of a general dissatisfaction
with colonial discourse theory, including the critics Chandra Talpade
Mohanty, Benita Parry and Aijaz Ahmad.28 These critiques stress the textu-
alist and idealist basis of such analysis and point out the fact that they ne-
glect specific local differences, which agrees with Clark’s arguments as
well. As argued by Clark,

hybridity is the notion of a redeployment of practices and discourse,

even whole constructions of the self, into the interstitial space be-
tween cultures has a long presence in varying shapes and media-
tions of the “other”. It requires mutual acceptance and sometimes
adherence to values and practices, involving reciprocal tolerance
and sometimes reciprocal formal acknowledgment. The hybrid is
dependent on neither colonial nor post-colonial situations and may
indeed have been historically subversive of the hegemonies of both.
(Clark 2007: 2)

The art historian Frederik N. Bohrer used Bhabha’s ideas on hybridity and
applied them to photography. He takes Sevruguin and his life as an exam-
ple of cultural “between-ness”, since he was influenced and knew both cul-
tures well due to his early movements back and forth between Tehran and
Tblisi, between the Iranian capital and an area newly under Russian rule.
He talks about the conditions of photographic hybridity.29 Behdad has been
critical of Bohrer’s use of New Historical/Postcolonial language to describe
early photography as a self-fashioning and hybrid phenomenon. He takes
Sevruguin and also Nāser al-Din Shah as examples for his argumentation.
In the words of Behdad,

Qajar photography, as a Western mode of representation, borrowed

its images from the large body of Orientalist discourses and artistic
practices. Neither Sevruguin nor Nāser al-Din Shah could have cap-
tured “the complexities and contradictions of a multicultural so-
ciety”, as Bohrer claims. (Behdad 2001: 148)

I do fully agree with Behdad’s statement, these photographers could not

have captured the complexities and contradictions of a multicultural so-
ciety. But, their work (probably in an unconscious way) does reflect the
double exposure of the photographer to Western and Iranian culture.
Therefore, the photographs are, to my understanding, the only ones that
can be classified under the term hybrids. The historian G.R. Garthwaite
has strongly criticized the author’s methodologies of the book Sevruguin
and the Persian Image (among them Bohrer and Behdad). He states that
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 181

historians value this kind of photography as texts that need contex-

tualization from other contemporary sources, without which the
photographs cannot be fully understood or appreciated.
Decontextualization is but one of the negative consequences of
Said’s orientalism and, as stated further in his article, the use of
“hybridity” as analytical categories, says more about late twentieth-
century academic interests than late nineteenth-century Iran.
(Garthwaite 2000: 409)

This fully agrees with Clark’s arguments that I have introduced on the pre-
vious page. After having introduced this discourse on hybridity, it is clear
that one must be careful with using the term hybridity. To make my posi-
tion clear, I will define aesthetic hybridity (maybe better hybrid aesthetic)
as a cultural practice that presents, next to each other, elements that come
from two different cultures and that share space in a work of art, in this
case, in a photograph. Nevertheless, the use of this word was not accurate
for this particular phenomenon and after some time I adopted “appropria-
tion” because it better reflects the meaning of that phenomenon.30
Etymologically the word “appropriation” derives from the Latin ad
meaning “to”, with the notion of “rendering to”, and proprius, “own or
personal”, yielding in combination, appropriare, “to make one’s own”.
Appropriation is active, subjective and motivated. Following the definition
of the word appropriation by the art historian Robert S. Nelson in Critic
Terms for Art History, it seems more adequate to use the term “appopria-
tion” to define what happened with nineteenth-century Iranian photography
in the process of its being influenced by Western photography. As the art
historians Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff explain,

Its application to art and art history is relatively recent and pertains
to the art work’s adoption of preexisting elements. Such actions
have been less successfully described as “borrowings”, as if what is
taken is ever repaid, or as “influences”, that elusive agency, by
which someone or something infects, informs, provokes, or guides
the production or reception of the artwork (…) Michel Foucault cri-
tized the concept of influence, in particular, as belonging to a con-
stellation of terms, which if poorly understood theoretically, never-
theless function to affirm and maintain the continuity and integrity
of history, tradition and discourse. In regard to art history itself,
Michel Baxandall also argued that influence occludes actor and
agency. In contrast, the term “appropriation” locates both in the per-
son of the maker or receiver. The difference between the two is the
same as the grammatical distinction between the passive and the ac-
tive voices. (Nelson & Shiff 2003: 161-162)
182 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

In conclusion, I will undertake a visual analysis of a group of photographs,

both by Iranian and Western photographers, which present this phenomen-
on of appropriation of foreign elements in their work, and therefore their
work displays a mixed aesthetic approach. As I have mentioned already,
there is always the possibility that the persons depicted chose the pose
themselves. In these cases they often picked traditional poses, such as
kneeling. Therefore, elements belonging to the two cultures can be traced
in the photographs, and they can have been caused both by the photogra-
pher or by the person depicted. The first is caused by the mixed cultural in-
fluence on the photographer and the second by the unconscious gestual re-
action of the body of the sitters that also can be conditioned by culture.
The photographs that I will analyze in this section show elements inherited
from the Victorian portrait tradition next to others from the Iranian cultural
background of the photographer and/or the sitter. I have grouped the photo-
graphs selected for this section in three categories: appropriation of the
objects held by the sitters (objects); appropriation of the use and role of the
studio props and paraphernalia, especially the chair (chair); and finally ap-
propriation of studio props that provoke a decontextualization of the sub-
ject, a tension between an unexpected sitter and an artificial atmosphere
best represented by the backdrop and studio props (tension). An artificial
and strange environment has been created: a Western environment in an
Iranian cultural context.
To start with the first group, objects, I have selected two images, one by
a Western photographer and the second one by an Iranian photographer. In
the first image (fig. 102), taken by Hoeltzer and already introduced in
chapter 3, we can see a group studio portrait of five men. The three men
sitting are mullahs and are wearing traditional garments. The two men
standing are probably servants. All of them are wearing a jobbe (gown) un-
der the abā (a form of outer garment that is open at the front and sleeveless
with large armholes). Men and women of all classes wore these two pieces
of clothes. The type of material (silk, wool, camel hair) and its weight var-
ied according to the time of the year. The three men sitting are wearing the
typical turban that completes the outfits of the mullahs. This photograph is
revealing as far as aesthetic hybridity is concerned as we see a mixture of
the Victorian portrait (frontal, hieratic) and the aesthetics of the Persian
miniatures represented by the flowers held by two of the men depicted.
The pose of the three men holding flowers in their hands recalls that of fig-
ure studies in miniature paintings where this pose was often used (see figs.
100 and 101, chapter 3). This element is unusual for this painting tradition
and cannot be found in Western painting. The next picture was taken by
Mirzā Mehdi Khān Chehre-Namā), an Iranian photographer who was
working successfully in Isfahan at around the same time as Hoeltzer. He
composed the pictures in exactly the same way: the same Victorian portrait
aesthetic mixed with that of the miniature represented by the flowers. If we
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 183

compare both pictures, we would not actually be able to tell which one
was taken by Hoeltzer or which one by Mirzā! This is apparent if we com-
pare the previous image with one taken by this Iranian photographer (fig.
176).
There are numerous examples that illustrate the second group, chairs,
like a photo taken by Montabone, in which a hybrid pose caused by the
use of the chair is to be found. In Viceré di Tebriz coi suoi ministri (fig.
99) we can see a boy who is kneeling on a chair as if it were the floor.
This is the kind of image that is produced, as I have stated above, by the
person depicted. As David Efron states in Gesture, Race and Culture,

“Hybrid” gesticulation indicates that the same individual may, if si-

multaneously exposed over a period of time to two or more gestu-
rally different groups, adopt and combine certain gestural traits of
both groups. (Efron 1972: 160)

In this case, a foreign element in the studio (chair) is used with a native
posture (kneeling). There are many examples of this kind of hybrid pos-
tures, like figure 97 already introduced in chapter 3, which depicts a child
squatting on a balustrade, therefore giving this studio prop a different role
from the one it had originally: a mere decorative element of the studio.
The chair is an interesting element used as part of the studio paraphernalia
and I have found many examples of photographs where the chair has been
given a particular use very different from the one that it was meant for: sit-
ting or just as a point to hold your balance. Seyyed Ali Darvandi is de-
picted in the next photograph (fig. 177) taken by the Iranian photographer
Ali Khān Hākem Vali. He is sitting on the floor and using the chair only to
rest his elbow. The fact that the main function of the chair is for people to
sit on makes the image quite bizarre (for Western eyes) since the man is
completely ignoring the function of the object and uses it in his own way.
Also taken by Hākem Vali is the next image that presents Mirzā
Mohammad Sādeq Sāhebnaqsh in exactly the same pose as in the previous
one (fig. 178). Another peculiar use of the chair in Iranian photographs is
as a table, placing, for example, a pot of flowers on top of it as if it were a
decorative object on top of a table. See the next two photographs by
Hākem Vali that show this interesting new function of the chair in the
photographer’s studio. In the first one, Mirzā Ali Khān Sartip (fig. 179) is
depicted and in the second one Ali Āghā Akkās (also a photographer) (fig.
180). I have seen the same two pots of flowers being photographed by
Hākem Vali over and over again. There are many other examples of this
kind taken by other Iranian photographers.
A photograph that I have already introduced in chapter 2, is one that de-
picts a scholar sitting on a chair with a book on his lap (fig. 76). The stu-
dio paraphernalia and pose is typical of the Victorian portrait: carpet,
184 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

curtain a table with books…. But the inscriptions in the upper left corner
of the image is the Persian element that finally gives the image a hybrid
aesthetic and specific representation. The inscription in the upper part of
the photograph is a philosophical poem, a reflection about the importance
of the meaning of the image beyond its mere form and outer appearance.
In this image, the sitting pose is used instead of the traditional Persian way
of kneeling or sitting on the floor. Some of the photographs selected for
the second chapter of this book (text and photography) show this same
mixed aesthetic.
The last group, tension, includes images, such as the next two photo-
graphs, that are shocking images of two prisoners (Hajji Mirza Ahmade
Kermani and Hajji Mohamad Ali Saya-he Mahalati ) posing in a photogra-
pher’s studio (figs. 181 and 182), precisely that of Mohammad Hasan Qajar.
The subject is totally out of context, the background and studio parapher-
nalia look ridiculous next to the hard look and position of the prisoner.
Further examples of this kind are those taken by the court photographer
Rezā Akkāsbāshi. After analyzing many photographs taken by this photo-
grapher, I can now recognize the authorship of his photographs simply by
looking at the backdrop, which shows a landscape with a typical Victorian
house (like in fig. 92, introduced in chapter 3). The interesting decontex-
tualization that is to be found widely not only among Iranian photogra-
phers but also in the work of other Asian and African photographers is
where a native person is depicted in front of a painted background with a
landscape that does not belong to the real context of the person depicted.
A sort of spatial and temporal dislocation is achieved through this decon-
textualization between the backdrop and the sitter. Sometimes it was not
the topic of the backdrop’s painting, but the mere use that the backdrop
was given. In many photographs taken by nineteenth-century Iranian
photographers we can notice that the photograph has not been framed
“properly”, meaning here, that one of the functions of the backdrop (to
make “more” credible a staged photograph in the studio) has been ignored,
be it by technical restrictions of the camera or on purpose by the photogra-
phers. Nevertheless, there are clear examples of the second possibility, like
a stereographic portrait of Mozaffar al-Din Shah (fig. 183): the Shah is de-
picted sitting on a chair and is smiling at the camera, the photographer
stands far away from him and takes the picture from behind a fence so that
the Shah, the backdrop and the whole montage completely lose their origi-
nal function. The Western backdrops contrast with a more local kind of
backdrops that in some cases were patterned (with abstract designs, often a
carpet) that introduced an element of indeterminance (see figs. 184 and
67). It is interesting to note the striking parallel between the kind of images
just analyzed and those produced by the Malian photographer Seydou
Keïta in the 1960s. He also used patterned and abstract backdrops that con-
trast with the realist backdrops used by Victorian photographers. This
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 185

practice is also found in nineteenth-century African photography and

Indian photography.31
In retrospect, Western and Iranian photographers both constructed photo-
graphs based on their own perception, their own reading (i.e. interpretation
or/and manipulation) of the reality that surrounded them. However,
Western photographers displayed an ethnographical approach in their work
that was (normally) free of the Orientalist taste, and next to that, Sevruguin
also produced a remarkable corpus of the so-called Orientalist photogra-
phy. The photographs taken by Western photographers have been decon-
structed through their cultural components, like I did in the previous chap-
ters with the Iranian ones: the direction of writing, the lack of inscriptions
on the photographic surface, the pose of the sitter (sitting, frontal, hieratic),
and understanding the space are the cultural components.
In reality, the aesthetics of Iranian photographers were the product of tra-
vels that Western and Iranian photographers undertook in both directions.
Carlhian, Montabone and Sevruguin were the most influential Western
photographers, at least regarding court photographers. Carhlian introduced
the Victorian portrait’s aesthetics and studio paraphernalia, and the cyano-
type process to Iranian court photographers; Montabone introduced hand-
colored photography and the technique of vignetting; and Sevruguin added
a pictorialist approach to Iranian photography. Rezā Akkāsbāshi and
Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar, both court photographers, traveled to Europe and
were also influenced by Western teachers in the court. Also, next to the
Western influences in the court, there were the ones from Western photo-
graphers who were visited by Iranian photographers in Europe, notably the
French Nadar. These travels not only provided exchanges and refinements
but also made the Western photographers witnesses to the formation of a
new modern concept that Iranians formed of their own life and their own
desires. Thus, these photographs turned out to become a brilliant unadulter-
ated document as to the way Iranians recorded their passage from tradition
to modernity, especially as regards to life in the court.
Indeed, as a mediator between the two cultures, these Iranian court
photographers, not only brought the aesthetics of their European counter-
parts home, but they propagated the royal Persian image abroad through
the lenses of their cameras, a commodity as valuable as spices brought to
Europe by Marco Polo.

Notes

1 Edward Young, eighteenth-century poet and playwrigh (1683-1765), Conjectures on

Original Composition. In a Letter to the Author of Sir Charles Grandison, London, A.
Millar and R. and J. Dodsley, 1759.
2 Sontag 1979: 153-180.
186 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

3 It is important to remark here that whenever I use the term Orientalism, I will exclusively
refer to Said’s Orientalism, but this does not meant that I view the whole corpus of
Oriental Studies or Western photographic corpus through Said’s prism.
4 Buruma and Margalit 2005.
5 The National Geographic Magazine, published by the National Geographic Society,
Washington, D.C., April 1921.
6 The word odalisque appears in a French form, and originates from the Turkish odalik,
meaning “chambermaid”, from oda, “chamber” or “room”. During the nineteenth century
odalisques became common fantasy figures in the artistic movement known as
Orientalism.
7 See: Benjamin 1997: 32-40.
8 See: Nochlin 1983.
9 For further reading on this topic and interesting examples see: Voigt, F. (2002),
Qadscharische Bildfliesen im Etnologischen Museum Berlin. Berlin: Staatliche Mussen zu
Berlin.
10 Alloula 1986.
11 To see the examples: Perez 1988: 107.
12 To see the examples: Alloula 1986: 62, 63 and 65.
13 Adele Perlmutter-Heilperin co-owned the studio with her two brothers. The studio pros-
pered and around 1890, the Atelier was named Photographer to the Imperial Court. Also
in 1890, Perlmutter- Heilperin turned over management of the studio to one of her
brothers.
14 Luckhardt, who at that time was the First Secretary of the Viennese Photographic
Association, was born in Germany, but after a short stay in Paris and England, he settled
in Vienna in 1865 and opened his own studio in 1867 as an elegant society photographer.
For more information on this photographer, see: Auer, A. (1997), Die vergessene Briefe
und Schriften. Niépce, Daguerre, Talbot, Photographische Gesellschaft in Wien (PhGW):
50-51.
15 The only instance in which “art” in any way approximated an academic discipline before
the mid-nineteenth century had been in the education of kings and princes within the roy-
al household. Maryam Ekhtiar, “From Workshop and Bazaar to Academy. Art Training
and Production in Qajar Iran”, in Ehktiar 1998: 63.
16 Afshar 1992B: 262.
17 Dieulafoy, J. (1887), La Perse, la Chaldée, la Susiane. Paris: Phebus. The whole travelo-
gue (but not all images) have been reprinted in two volumes: Une amazone en Orient
(2010) and L’Orient sous le voile (edition 2011). Paris: Phebus.
18 Bird, I. (1891), Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan. Travels on Horseback in 1890, Long
Rider’s Guild Press. Reprinted in two volumes in 2004.
19 Bell, G. L. (1894), Safar Nameh. Persian Pictures. A Book of Travel. London: Richard
Bentley and Son: 96-111. This travelogue has been published in a modern edition in:
Bell, G. and Lukitz, L. (2005). Persian Pictures, Anthem Studies in Travel.
20 As summarized and translated from Zokā 1997: 178-180.
21 Rosenblum 1994: 42.
22 Manson, G. J. (1883), “Work for Women in Photography”, Philadelphia Photographer 20:
37. Taken from Rosenblum 1994: 48.
23 Clark, J. (2007), Hybridity in Asian Art Now: conference outline: 2.
24 The Mutinity Papers is a corpus of historical documents written in Urdu and Persian
about the 1857 Indian mutinity or the “first war of independence”, when Indian soldiers
of the British army rebelled against their colonial masters. They are held at the National
Archive in Delhi.
25 After Clark (2007): see Dalrymple, W. (2006), The Last Mughal; The Fall of a Dynasty,
Delhi, 1857. London: Bloomsbury: 13-14.
INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WESTERN AND IRANIAN PHOTOGRAPHY 187

26 Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1998: 119.

27 A term used to emphasize that post-colonial cultures are the product of a number of forces
variously contributing to a new and complex cultural formation.
28 See, after Ashcroft (1998): Mohanty, C.T. (1984), “Under Western eyes: Feminist scholar-
ship and colonial discourse”, Boundary 2: 71-92; Parry, B. (1987), “Problems in current
discourse theory”, Oxford Literary Review 9: 27-58, and Parry, B. (1994), “Resistance
theory/theorising resistance: Two cheers for nativism”, Colonial Discourse/Postcolonial
Theory. Manchester and NY: Manchester University Press; Ahmad, A. (1992), In Theory:
Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso.
29 Bohrer 1999: 33-53.
30 I am very grateful to Kitty Zijlmans for her ideas and insight on the topic of hybridity
and appropriation.
31 For an interesting article about the widespread use of props and backdrops in popular
postcolonial photography and the way it expresses a resistance to the documentary claims
of photography and a foregrounding of critics of modernity, see: Appadurai, A. (1997),
“The Subaltern Backdrop”, in Afterimage 24 (5): 4-7.
CONCLUSION

Nineteenth-century Western photographers constructed other culture’s reali-

ties as much as Iranian photographers constructed their own. Both groups
of photographers produced their own constructed realities of the same “rea-
lity” and the result of each process of construction was deeply influenced
by the cultural background of the photographer. Studios were nothing more
than mere theaters where, both sitters and photographers, could eternally
freeze the image that they wanted others and themselves to see. The
Western creations were done, only in part, in line with Orientalist photo-
graphy that was fashionable at that time and practiced in other “exotic”
countries such as Algeria or Egypt. The Iranian photographs were influ-
enced both by the Iranian pictorial tradition and by the Western (i.e.
Victorian) model. Nevertheless, regardless of their nationality, photogra-
phers did not fail to submit to fashion when producing for the tourist mar-
ket, for which the cultural origins of the photographer were of little impor-
tance. These elaborated representations never failed to reflect the ideology
of their epoch. Iran was not a commercial country at all as far as its photo-
graphic material is concerned; therefore commercial photography has
almost NO relevance regarding the amount of photographic material pro-
duced in Iran in the nineteenth century, and it can be almost reduced exclu-
sively to the work of Antoin Sevruguin. Iran was not on the route of the
steamers going from Europe to Japan and this was one of the reasons why
commercial photography did not flourish there as it did massively in other
Asian countries.
For my dissertation (the materia prima for this book), I conducted a thor-
ough visual analysis of photographic material and developed a model to vi-
sually analyze and compare corpuses of photographs and paintings. This
model aims to strip images of their cultural components in a multilayered
process in the same way, but in the reversed direction, as the images were
constructed: images present different elements in a multilayered form and
these elements can be analyzed one after the other as if we were peeling
off an onion. Further, what I mean by “reversed direction” is that I ana-
lyzed the images to define the elements present in the photographs in the
contrary direction (temporal and probably also spatial) of the one in which
the photographs were taken. The set of cultural components through which
I have deconstructed nineteenth-century Iranian photographs is composed
of: the direction of the script which leads to a tendency in nineteenth-
century Iranian photographers to produce mirror-like images of those pro-
duced by their Western colleagues; the use of text within the photographic
space; the pose of the sitter; and the understanding of the space. This
190 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

constitutes a particular cultural-components-set of Iranian photography in

the nineteenth-century. Mirror-like compositions are directly related to the
direction of writing of the script; use of text and pose are directly related
to the Iranian painting tradition. Space remains the least convincing com-
ponent for a comparative analysis between painting and photography, since
the technical restrictions of the camera seem to play a dominant role in the
understanding of the space in photography. If we would conduct the same
research with a Japanese, Chinese or Indian photographic corpus, we may
find a comparable cultural-component recipe.
The model developed here can be summarized as follows: define the
photographic corpus; define the corpus of paintings ; conduct a visual ana-
lysis of both corpuses to establish differences and similarities between
them; define the cultural components found after visual analysis of the
photographic and painting material (these cultural components can include
some of the ones already defined for Iranian photography, but the final cul-
tural set will probably be different); and lastly, establish categories or
groups of photographs that represent the cultural components defined in
the previous section. The model could be used also to compare two cor-
puses of photographs (not necessarily involving paintings): for example, a
corpus of photographs taken by Spanish photographers in South America
and a second corpus of photographs taken by South American photogra-
phers in their own countries, in the nineteenth century. Regardless of the
corpuses compared, this method is based on very large corpuses of graphic
material.
The cultural-components-set found and defined after pursuing an in-
depth visual analysis of the corpuses selected for this dissertation and the
interaction between the different disciplines, can be summarized through
the next diagram (graphic 2, see full color section):

The basic steps for applying the model are:

1 Build up corpuses of graphic material, gathering as many images as
possible from archives, printed books, etc.
2 Cross-visual analyze corpuses of graphic material.
3 Establish hypotheses.
4 Theoretical perspective: once the topics (classification of the images in
groups) to study are defined, we have to delve in a historical theoretical
perspective for each one of them, in order to make an analysis of the
state-of-the-field related to each particular hypothesis (theoretical sup-
port of each hypothesis).
5 Establish categories after having tested the hypotheses both theoreti-
cally and empirically.

In each chapter, I have analyzed the photographs from one of the four per-
spectives defined (visual laterality; use of text; pose; and space). To
CONCLUSION 191

conclude this book, I would like to come back to a few photographs,

which have already been introduced from a multi-perspective point of
view, to show that the above listed elements are not isolated phenomena
but all share space within the photograph.
The portrait of a kneeling mullah (fig. 75) summarized the different as-
pects of the Persian visual art tradition present in nineteenth-century
Iranian photography: the use of inscriptions; the philosophical understand-
ing of images as powerful tools but in compliance with their inherent fea-
tures (such as with Sufi philosophy); the poetic tone of the text; the use of
traditional objects (tasbi); the traditional kneeling pose of the sitter; and
the use of an ornamental frame. Another photograph that presents several
characteristic elements found in Persian miniatures is the portrait of the
poet Gha’ani (fig. 55): the use of inscriptions; traditional kneeling pose;
objects held (water pipe); studio paraphernalia (cushion); and an elaborated
passe-partout. The third photograph selected here is the group portrait of
the poets in Shiraz (fig. 57): the use of inscriptions (poem); traditional
kneeling pose of some of the sitters; objects held (tasbi, flowers); and the
omnipresent pots of flowers.
Most of the photographs analyzed in this book present at least two of
the Persian elements mentioned above, revealing a different aesthetic ap-
proach to the dominant, Victorian model of photography that was in vogue
in the nineteenth century. The research conducted in this book has shown
that different aesthetic models of representation existed in the nineteenth
century, related to their specific socio-political and cultural context, such as
in this case Iran.
AFTERWORD

Here, I would like to introduce briefly the areas which I am researching

currently. The work that I have presented in this book is merely a prelimin-
ary research, from an art historical standpoint, of a small part of the fasci-
nating and to date still underresearched field of Iranian photography, or
more precisely, of the aesthetics of Iranian photographers in the nineteenth
century. As a result of what I think is the logical evolution to my research,
I have taken the decision to detach myself from the restrictions of conduct-
ing a comparative research between painting and photography. This ap-
proach was fundamental for me when I started this research in 2004. No
study had been done before on this topic in the field of photography and
turning my eyes to painting was both very educative and inspiring, and I
would say, the most obvious thing to do. The topics that I shall be working
on in the future are:

1 Visual Laterality. I am currently gathering graphic material from differ-

ent fields of the visual arts (photography, painting, graphic design, film,
etc) for a projected book that will explore this topic from a wide inter-
medial perspective. I am building up two corpuses of graphic material
(one from Iran and the other from Spain) for a comparative analysis.

2 The Written Image: Text and Photography. I am working on the con-

ceptual design of a book about the topic of text and photography in
nineteenth-century Asia, but with a stronger focus on Iranian photogra-
phy and expanding the topic to other countries, aiming for a compara-
tive analysis of the content and spatial implementation of the inscrip-
tions within the photographic space.

3 Methodological issues. Through the research for my PhD thesis I have

developed a method of comparative analysis that seems to be useful for
art historians, to locate, define and prove the cultural conditioning in
the production of images (and of photographs in this particular exam-
ple). Due to the unexpected interest that this approach has caused in
some of the readers of my dissertation (supervisors, reading committee
members and some colleagues), I have decided to keep exploring these
theoretical and methodological issues. In addition to applying this
method of research to other photographic and painting corpuses, I will
keep refining the method by applying it further to my two aforemen-
tioned research topics (visual laterality and the written image). In the
194 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

future, I intend to elaborate the theoretical definition of this

methodology.

4 Lives and work of the Iranian photographers considered in this book

are a continuous source of interest for further research. Currently, I am
actively researching signatures and Iranian court photographers.
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APPENDIX: PHOTO-CHRONOLOGY

General Photo-chronology
Iranian Photo-chronology1

1835 Publication of the first litographic newspaper in Iran by Mirzā

Salih Shirazi.

1839 Daguerre reproduces images by the action of light on silver-coated

copperplate. The french government purchases rights to the process and
makes it available to the French people.

– Talbot announces to the British Royal academy his reproduction of

images on paper by the action of light.

1841 Talbot patents the calotype process.

1842 Introduction of daguerreotype process in Iran. Nikolav Pavlov takes

his first daguerreotypes by mid-December 1842.

1844
Jules Richard (1816-1891) becomes the first Western photographer to work
in the Persian Court.

1847 Claude Félix Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor proposes using a glass

plate coated with albumen and silver halides as a negative.

1849 Gustave Le Gray introduces the waxed-paper process in France.

1850 Frederick Scott Archer, a British sculptor, invents the wet-plate

process.

– Blanquart-Evrard announces the process for making photographic prints

on paper coated with albumen.

1851 A special department for photography is opened in 1851 at Dār al-

Fonun (Academy), Iran’s first institution of higher learning based on
Western models.
210 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

– Luigi Pesce (active 1848-1861), an Italian colonel and master of the

calotype process, arrives in Iran.

– Fochetti arrives in Iran, a master in the wet-collodion process.

– August Karl Kriz (1814-1886) experiments in Iran with photography

on paper.

1853 Tintype process is invented in France.

1854 Collodion positive images (“Ambrotypes”) are introduced.

– French photographer A.A.E. Disdéri patents small-format “carte-de-

visite”.

1857 Francois Carlhian and Henry de Coulibeouf Blocqueville arrive

with the French Mission.

1860 While photographing the Turcoman revolt in Khurasan, the equip-

ment of Carlhièe and Blocqueville is smashed to pieces and Blocqueville is
taken prisoner.

1862 French physicist Louis Ducos du Hauron describes methods of pro-

ducing photographic images in color.

– Luigi Montabone (d. 1877) comes with the Italian mission. He intro-
duces the hand-coloring technique in Iran.

– Angelo Piamontese’s article “The Photograph Album of the Italian

Mission to Persia (Summer 1862)” is published.

1863 The eldest treatise describing the act of photography and how to
develop pictures and make copies is written by Mohammad Kāzim B.
Ahmad Mahallāti by order of Nāser al-Din Shah.

– The earliest information known to date about the introduction of photo-

graphy in Iran: the third volume of the “Mer’at al-buldān-e Nāseri”,
written by I’timād al-Saltane (Sāni al-Dawle) is published.

– Abbās Ali Beik starts working at court, supervises Akskhāne and helps
Rezā Akkāsbāshi to develop photographs.

1864 Walter B. Woodburry, in England, patents the Woodburytype.

APPENDIX: PHOTO-CHRONOLOGY 211

– Rezā Akkāsbāshi (1843-1889) is granted the title Akkāsbāshi (Chief

Photographer) in recognition of his mastery of photography.

1869 Nāser al-Din Shah starts taking pictures and learns the technique
with Jules Richard and Francois Carlhièe.

– Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar (1849-1908) travels to Europe to study

photography.

1870 Mirzā Hasan Akkāsbāshi (1854-1916) starts working as a photo-

grapher in his hometown Shiraz.

1871 The dry-plate silver bromide process is announced by Richard

Leach Maddox; it is not perfected until 1878.

– The German ingenieur Ernst Hoeltzer starts taking photographs in

Isfahan, where he lives for 30 years.

1873 Platinum-printing method is invented in England.

1877 Mirzā Hoseyn Ali Akkās starts working at court and eventually be-
comes the head of Akskhāne. He was active for over 20 years.

1878 “Fann-e Akkāsi”, “The Art of Photography” was published in

Tehran (translation made by Antovan Khān for Mozaffar al-Din Shah).

1880 First halftone reproduction of a photograph appears in a NY

newspaper.

– Antoin Sevruguin starts working in Iran.

– “Qavā’ed-e aks va telegrāf”, “Principles of Photography and

Telegraphy” is written by Hasan B. Ali Rezæ Lāhiji Najafi.

– Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri starts working at court.

1881 Frederic E. Ives invents halftone photoengraving process, making it

possible to reproduce photographic and other images in the same operation
as the printing of text.

– Jane Dieulafoy journeys through Iran and takes many photographs of

landscapes, people and architecture.

1882 Manucher Khān Akkās starts working in Tabriz.

212 LOCAL PORTRAITURE

1884 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar starts his career as a professional photogra-

pher after coming back from Europe.

1886 Mirzā Mohammad Rezā Akkās (1869-1903) starts working as a

photographer in Shiraz.

1888 Introduction of George Eastman’s Kodak camera.

– “Al-Ma’āthir wa-l-āthār” by E’temād al-Saltane is published (this is

the second source of information written about the introduction of
photography in Iran, as stated by Afshar).

1889 George Eastman applies for patent on transparent roll film.

1890 The Dutch amateur photographer and businessman Albert Hotz

takes photographs in Iran during a trip of several months in the country.
He also collects photographs of other photographers like Hoeltzer and
Sevruguin.

– Isabella Lucy Bishop-Bird journeys in Iran and takes photographs of

the landscape and people.

– Aghayanes Armeni starts working and opens a studio outside of the

court.

– Mohammad Hasan Qajar starts working at court.

– Mirzā Jahāngir Khān Akkās starts working at court.

1895 Another treatise on photography is written by Nawwāb Mushin

Mirzā.

1896 Mr Iqbāl Yaghmā’i’s article “The beginnings of the craft of photo-

graphy and stereotyping in Iran” is published (it is the best source of in-
formation about Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar).

1904 Mirzā Fatollāh Chehrehnegār (1878-1942), starts taking photo-

graphs in Shiraz.

1911 Gertrude Bell is actively taking photographs in Iran.

1918 Mirzā Habib Allāh Chehrehnegār (1897-1943) starts taking photo-

graphs in Shiraz.
APPENDIX: PHOTO-CHRONOLOGY 213

Note

1 The article “Some Remarks on the Early History of Photography in Iran” by Iraj Afshar
has been fundamental for this chronology.
About the author

Carmen Pérez González was born in 1969 in Valencia (Spain). She studied
Astrophysics at Barcelona University and was awarded her M.A. in 1993.
As a photographer, she has published the catalogue of a solo exhibition
about women workers in Asia taken during a two-and-a-half year’s journey
through Asia (Museo Príncipe Felipe, Valencia, Spain), as well as several
portfolios. For several years, she worked as a cultural manager, organizing
exhibitions, at the Science Museum in Barcelona (Spain) and at the
Department of Culture of the Embassy of Spain in Prague (Czech
Republic). In October 2005, she was awarded her ABD (“All But
Dissertation”) in Fine Arts (Photography) at Barcelona University and in
February 2007, she was admitted as an external PhD researcher at the
Department of Art History, Leiden University. She defended her PhD
Thesis, “A Comparative Visual Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Iranian
Portrait Studio Photography and Persian Painting” in February 2010 and
was awarded the ICAS Best Book Prize (PhD Thesis, Asian Studies,
Humanities) at ASS/ICAS 2011 in Hawaii. She has published several arti-
cles about nineteenth-century photography in Iran, India, Japan and Egypt
in academic magazines and books. She is currently working as a curatorial
research fellow at the “Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst” in Cologne where
she is preparing an exhibition (and catalogue in English and German) with
a selection of 350 photographs from its collection of nineteenth-century
photographs from different Asian countries (From Istanbul to Yokohama:
The Camera Meets Asia, 1839-1900), due for April 2013.
Index

A
Abbās Ali Beyk 35 D
Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri 36, 82, 83, Daguerreotype 27, 30, 38, 47, 195,
92-94, 121, 156, 211, 257, 263, 264, 209, 232
291 Dār al-Fonun 23, 27-29, 34-36, 38,
Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar 32, 36, 90, 86, 89, 90, 91, 166, 171, 209
166, 167, 171, 172, 177, 185, 211, Diffuse composition 21, 24, 131-133,
212, 260, 261, 262, 285, 298, 327 144, 146, 147, 151, 152
Aesthetic preferences 9, 62, 64, 66, Direction of writing 9, 21, 23, 41, 42,
199 43, 52, 58, 59, 67, 68, 185, 190, 196,
Aghayanz Armeni 36 200, 227
Aks 28, 174, 175, 211 Direction of script 23, 66
Akskhāne Mobārake-ye Homāyuni, (the
Royal Photographic Atelier) 27, 30, E
121, 126, 163, 164, 272, 289 Ernst Hoeltzer 9, 31, 39, 127, 160,
Albert Hotz 197, 208, 212 167, 182, 183, 196, 197, 207, 212,
Ali Khān Amin Hazrat 34 275, 280
Ali Khān Vali Hākem 37, 172, 308,
309 F
Amal 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 101 Fáteme Soltān Khānom 176
Amir Khān Jalil al-Dawle Qajar 36, Ferdowsi Studio 275
260 Fochetti 28, 210
Anis al-Dowle 30, 121, 126, 163, Francois Carlhian 28, 29, 34, 166,
164, 272, 289 171, 178, 185, 210
Antonio Gianuzzi 28, 29, 30, 166 Franz Stolze 33
Antoin Sevruguin 31, 33, 34, 36, 128, Friedrich Sarre 33
166-169, 171, 176, 178, 180, 185,
189, 196, 197, 207, 208, 211, 212, G
281, 300, 301, 302 Gertrude Lowthian Bell 33, 207, 212
Appropriation 21, 178, 181, 182, 187 Gholām-Hoseyn Derakhshān 264
Asraf al-Soltane 176 Grid 21, 24, 131-136, 140, 142, 143,
August Karl Krziz 28 145-147, 151, 152, 206
Aziz-e Jahān 176
H
B Habib-e Zamān 176
Boudoir Studio 298 Handedness 42, 48, 57, 58, 59, 62,
64, 67, 69, 200, 201
C Henry René d’Allemagne 34
Comparative analysis 9, 10, 190, 193 Hybridity 173, 178-182, 186, 187, 208
218 INDEX

I Mixed aesthetics 21
Image world 157, 165, 208 Mohammad Hasan Qajar 36, 120,
Iraj Afshar 13, 17, 26-28, 38, 78, 208, 212, 274, 310
213, 229, 240 Mohammad Jafar Mirzā 90, 299
Isabella Lucy Bishop-Bird 33, 212 Mohammad Shah 27, 34
Isometrical projection 137, 146 Movassaq Karimi 297
Mozaffar al-Din Shah 36, 77, 89, 90,
J 102, 184, 211, 255, 259, 261, 311
Jacques Jean Marie de Morgan 33
Jane Dieulafoy 33, 211 N
Joseph Papaziant 36 Naskh 73, 74, 76, 77, 82, 89, 90, 92-
Jules Richard 27, 166, 209, 211 95, 253
Nāser al-Din Shah 23, 27, 28, 29, 30,
K 34, 35, 36, 38, 49, 77, 84, 91, 94,
Ketāb-e ‘aks 28 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129,
130, 148, 149, 156, 163, 164, 165,
L 167, 170, 171, 172, 176, 180, 196,
Linear perspective 132-133, 137-138, 207, 210, 211, 241, 262, 272, 279,
145-148, 152, 284 280, 287, 289, 304, 307, 318, 327
Luigi Montabone 28, 29, 121, 166, Nasta’liq 74, 76-79, 82, 87, 88, 202,
197, 210, 274, 299, 318, 326, 327, 253, 254
Luigi Pesce 28, 210 National Geographic Magazine (Persia)
31, 161, 162, 168, 186, 197, 207,
M 291-296
Malak Ghāsem Mirzā 30 Neuro-aesthetics 55
Manucher Khān Akkās 35, 167, 211, Neuroarthistory 55, 56, 68, 152, 200
259 Nikolai Pavlov 27, 209
Mirzā Ahmad Khān Sāne al-Saltane Non-linear perspective 24, 131, 136
35
Mirzā Fatollāh Cheherhnegār 37, 212 O
Mirzā Habibollāh Chehrehnegār 37, Occidentalism 160, 161, 206
124, 273, 278 Orientalism 25, 126, 159, 160, 163,
Mirzā Hasan Akkasbāshi 37, 79, 130, 164, 165, 181, 186, 196, 203, 206,
211 208
Mirzā Jafar Akkasbāshi 262 Osrat Khānom 176
Mirzā Jahāngir Khān Akkās 36, 212
Mirzā Ahmad Chehreh-Namā 278 R
Mirzā Mehdi Chehreh-Namā 148, Reading habits 41, 51, 54, 62, 63, 65,
182, 286, 307 66, 67, 69, 199, 201
Mirzā Mohammad Rezā Akkāsbāshi Rezā Akkāsbāshi 29, 30, 34, 35, 37,
37 46, 120, 121, 163, 166, 167, 171,
Mirzā Seyed Ali 35 172, 174, 177, 184, 185, 210, 211,
Mirror writing 57, 58, 59, 62, 67, 229, 231, 234, 238, 241, 271, 272,
200, 201 288, 297, 306
INDEX 219

S Victorian portrait 164, 168, 173, 174,

Self-orientalism 163, 164 182, 183, 185, 206
Scanned composition 133
Sven Hedin 34 W
W. Ordén 31, 32, 170, 221-225, 232,
T 304-306
Thuluth 73, 74, 76, 86-90, 92 World Art Studies 10, 22, 25, 55, 68,
200, 201
V Written image 71, 193
Visual Laterality 10, 14, 21, 22, 23,
25, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49, 51, Y
54, 55, 57, 63, 66, 67, 165, 177, 190, Yahyā Zokā 13, 38, 89
193 Ya’qub Akkāsbāshi 120, 271
Visual brain 55, 56, 57, 251 Yokoyama Matsusaburo 98, 99, 202,
Vertical composition 21, 24, 131, 132, 265, 266
139, 140, 144, 146, 147, 148, 151 Yusof Khān Akkās 35
Vertical perspective 24, 131, 132,
139, 140, 141, 146, 147, 151
PHOTOS 221

Figure I Unknown Iranian author,

booklet on photography, c. 1859,
taken from Zokā 1997: 292.

Figure II Letter 1, signed W.

Ordén, 19th March 1986, Museum
für Völkerkunde, Vienna.
222 PHOTOS

Figure III Letter 2, signed W. Ordén, 7th April 1896, Museum für Völkerkunde,
Vienna.
PHOTOS 223

Figure IV W. Ordén, N 3162 Tehran. The Shah’s Harem, c. 1886, albumen print,
14.5 x 21 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-5232.

Figure V W. Ordén, N 3176, Tehran. The Shah´s Throne, c. 1886, albumen print,
18.8 x 14 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-5228.
224 PHOTOS

Figure VI W. Ordén, N 3133, Tabriz. The Tomb of Shah Abbās, c. 1886, albumen
print, 20.3 x 14.7 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-5223.

Figure VII W. Ordén, N 3139, Tabriz. Cemetery, c. 1886, albumen print, 18.8 x 15
cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-5222.
PHOTOS 225

Figure VIII W. Ordén, N 3150, Caravanserei Shiraz, c. 1886, albumen print, 21.4
x 16.3 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF- 5233.

Figure IX W. Ordén, N 3159, Enzali. The Imperial Palace, c. 1886, albumen print,
20.2 x 15.2 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-5234.
226 PHOTOS

Figure X Chronology of Western and Iranian photographers working at court and

Dār al-Fonun, by Carmen Pérez González.

Figure 1a Nakanishi, Akira, Writing Systems of the World. Alphabet, Syllabaries,

Pictograms, Tokyo, 1980: 112.
 PHOTOS

Figure 1b Evolution of the direction of writing of scripts, made by Chris McManus, taken from McManus 2002: 242-43.
227
 228

Figure 2 Elaborated by Carmen Pérez González.

PHOTOS
PHOTOS 229

Figure 3 Anonymous Iranian photographer, a group of Bakhtiari children, c. 1880,

albumen print, particular collection of Iraj Afshar, taken from Afshar 1992: 317.

Figure 4 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Prince Firuz Mirzā children, 1866, albumen print,
16 x 11.5 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 133, Photo 91.
230 PHOTOS

Figure 5 Attr. Rezā Akkāsbāshi, sons of Mohandes-e Mamālek, c. 1866, albumen

print, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 191.

Figure 6 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Ismail, Asad al-Khān and Nāser al-Manushi, 1866,
albumen print, 20.5 x 15.4 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 188, Photo 19.
PHOTOS 231

Figure 7 Anonymous Iranian photographer, group portrait, c. 1880, taken from

Jalali 1998: 166.

Figure 8 Ignác Schächtl, group of children, c. 1890, albumen print, Tábor, Czech
Republic. Hosted at Photo-Museum Tábor, Czech Republic.
232 PHOTOS

Figure 9 Josef Jindrich Sechtl, Novak Family, 1911, albumen print, Bozejov, Czech
Republic. Hosted at Photo-Museum Tábor, Czech Republic.

Figure 10 W. Ordén, Khiva women with their children, c. 1886, albumen print,
14.7 x 20.3 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF5107.
PHOTOS 233

Figure 11 Lorichón, Grupo de

señora y dos niñas.
Daguerreotype, 1850, Archivo
Museu de la Ciencia i la Tècnica
de Catalunya, Barcelona.

Figure 12 Julio Derrey, El relo-

jero Juan Bautista Carbonell y fa-
milia (Valencia), 1890, albumen
print, 22.6 x 16.8 cm, Juan José
Prósper Dı́az Collection.
234 PHOTOS

Figure 13 Unknown Iranian photo-

grapher, two children, c. 1890, albu-
men print, Golestān Palace Library,
Tehran, Album 269, photo 25-2.

Figure 14 Attr. Rezā Akkāsbāshi, doble exposure of Bahā al-Molk, albumen print,
c. 1864, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, taken from Zokā 1997: 229.
PHOTOS 235

Figure 15 Anonymous Iranian photographer, Sālār al-Dowle (sitting), date un-

known, albumen print, Golestān Library Palace, Tehran, glass negative number 2338,
Album 83, taken from Jalali 1998: 62.

Figure 16 Unknown photographer,

untitled, date unknown, albumen
print, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.
236 PHOTOS

Figure 17 Fot. Atelier L.

Ranges Holetschke, brother and
sister, c. 1907, albumen print,
16.5 x 10.6 cm, Carmen Pérez
González Collection.

Figure 18 C. Pietzner, brother

and sister, c. 1890s, albumen
print, 16.4 x 11.3 cm, Carmen
Pérez González Collection.
PHOTOS 237

Figure 19 E. Gateau, Pareja

de Valencia, 1878, albumen print,
9.6 x 13.5 cm, Juan José Dı́az
Prósper Collection.

Figure 20 Vicente Simarro, Niño y niña (Játiva), c. 1870, albumen print,

10.8 x 7.6 cm, Juan José Dı́az Prósper Collection.
238 PHOTOS

Figure 21 Unknown Iranian

photographer, A Servant holding
Mohammad Khān, date un-
known, albumen print, Golestān
Palace Library, Tehran, glass ne-
gative number: 2989, Album 54.

Figure 23 Unknown Spanish photographer, Nodrissa, 1890, albumen print, 11.5 x

16.8 cm, Juan José Dı́az Prósper Collection.
PHOTOS 239

Figure 22 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Eyn al-Molk, c. 1865, albumen print, 16 x 11.9 cm,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 133, Photo 19.

Figure 24 Moliné y Albareda, without

title, c. 1865, albumen print, 6 x 10 cm,
Juan José Dı́az Prósper Collection.
240 PHOTOS

Figure 25 Anonymous Iranian photographer, Mirzā Hoseyn Khān Ehteshām, date

unknown, albumen print, Iraj Afshar Collection, taken from Afshar 1992: 319.

Figure 26 Unknown photographer, Sultan Ahmad Mirzā Qajar, c. 1903, albumen

print, taken from Afshar 1992: 33.
PHOTOS 241

Figure 27 Nāser al-Din Shah, Nāser al-Din

Shah, c. 1866, albumen print, 17.4 x 9.8 cm,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 133,
Photo 6.

Figure 28 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Hājji Ali Khān E’temād al-Saltane, c. 1866, albumen
print, 18.3 x 13.8 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 188, Photo 21.
242 PHOTOS

Figure 29 Juan Ramón

Sabater, Antonio Alloza
(Castellón), c. 1880, 13.4 x 8.9
cm, Juan José Dı́az Prósper
Collection.

Figure 30 Atelier Elite, untitled, c. 1910s,

albumen print, 11.8 x 5 cm,
Carmen Pérez González Collection.
PHOTOS 243

Figure 31 Hans Heinrich, untitled, before

October 1911 (back inscription), albumen print,
11.8 x 4.8 cm, Orianenburg, Carmen Pérez
González Collection.

Figure 32 J. Laurent, Duc de

Medinaceli, 1868, albumen print,
6 x 10 cm, Juan José Dı́az Prósper
Collection.
244 PHOTOS

Figure 33 Examples of stimuli. A: top=right-biased weight, left-biased interest, and

left-to-right directionality, bottom=left-biased weight, right-biased interest, and right-
to-left directionality. B: top=left-biased weight, balanced interest, and right-to-left direc-
tionality, bottom=right-biased weight, balanced interest, and left-to-right directionality.
C: top=absent weight, right-biased interest, and absent directionality, bottom=absent
weight, left-biased interest, and absent directionality. D: top=balanced weight, absent
interest, and left-to-right directionality, bottom=balanced weight, absent interest, and
right-to-left directionality. Taken from Christman and Pinger, 1997: 159.

Figure 34 Unknown Iranian photographer, untitled, date unknown, albumen print,

taken from Jalali, 1998: 140-141.
PHOTOS 245

Figure 35 Unknown Iranian photographer, untitled, date unknown, albumen print,

taken from Jalali, 1998: 52-53.

Figure 36 Unknown Iranian photographer, untitled, date unknown, albumen print,

private collection.
246 PHOTOS

Figure 37 Fath Ali Shah Received by Mirzā Rezā Qoli Monshi al-Molk in
Sawdasht. Folio 61a from a manuscript of the Shāhanshāhnāme, Iran, c. 1810-18,
opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper, 39 x 26 cms, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
PHOTOS 247

Figure 38 Khosrow Discovers Shirin Bathing, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Bequest of

Irma B. Wikilson, 1997, 108.
248 PHOTOS

Figure 39 Shirin Presents a Jug of Milk to Farhād. Artist unknown. Iran, late 15th-
early 16th century. Opaque watercolour, ink, and gold on paper, 24.7 x 14.5 cm,
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, S86.0179.
PHOTOS 249

Figure 40 Artist unknown, Military Review with Fath Ali Shah and Prince Hoseyn
Ali Mirzā, Shiraz, Ink on paper, 53 x 96 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint
Petersburg, Inv. No. VR-1047. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo
by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.

Figure 41 Abdollāh Khān, Fath Ali Shah at the Hunt, Rayy, circa 1820-30, taken
from Diba 1998: 41.
250 PHOTOS

Figure 42 Note that the optics of the eye reverses the image of the arrow in the re-
tinae. The nerve fibres from each retina separate so that messages from the left half
of each retina travel to the visual cortex of the left hemisphere, and the messages
from the right halves travel to the visual cortex of the right hemisphere. Thus when
the center of the arrow is fixated (as shown) information in the left half of space (the
arrow head) goes to the right cortex, and information in the right half of space (the
feathers) goes to the left cortex. Note further that the two cortical representations are
not mirror-reversed with respect to each other. Taken from Ramón y Cajal 1899.
PHOTOS 251

Figure 43 The fibres from the retina terminate at the back of the brain, in a part
known as the primary visual cortex (area V1), shown in yellow on the medial side of
the left hemisphere of the brain. Taken from Zeki 1999: 15.

Figure 44 The visual brain consists of multiple functionally specialised areas, which
receive their visual input largely from V1 (yellow) and an area surrounding it known
as V2 (green). These are the best charted visual areas, but not the only ones. Other
visual areas are being continually discovered. Taken from Zeki 1999: 16.
252 PHOTOS

Figure 45 Stare at the nose of each face. Which looks happier? J. Jaynes found that
most right-handers choose the bottom face with the smile in their left visual field,
presumably because the smiling side is processed by the right hemisphere on central
fixation, taken from Jaynes 2000: 120.

Figure 46 Taken Gaffron 1950.

Figure 47 Detail in the hand of the most famous Ottoman calligrapher, Shaykh
Hamdullah, Istanbul, early sixteenth-century, Istanbul Museum of Islamic Art, taken
from Safadi 1978: 53.
PHOTOS 253

Figure 48 Naskhi Qur’an cop-

ied by the Ottoman calligrapher
Shaykh Hamdollah al-Amasini
the early sixteenth-century, Agha
Khan Collection, Geneva, taken
from Safadi 1978: 64.

Figure 49 Composite page of

Persian text in large ornamental
Ta’liq and small Nasta’liq by Shah
Mahmud al-Nishaburi, Persia, early
16th century, taken from Safadi
1978: 87.
254 PHOTOS

Figure 50 Compartments of various

shapes dividing sections of Persian verse
in free-flowing Nasta’liq. Page written
by Mohammad Darwish al-Samarqandi
in Kashmir in 1624, British Museum,
London.

Figure 51 Shekaste, written by Nawāb Morid Khān in India, probably during the
seventeenth century, Staatliche Museen, Berlin.
PHOTOS 255

Figure 52 Anonymous Iranian photographer, Crown Prince Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā,

c.1864-66, Archive of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies,
Tehran.

Figure 55 Anonymous Iranian photographer, Habib Qā’āni, a poet, date unknown,

albumen print, taken from Afshar 1992: 164.
256 PHOTOS

Figure 57 Mirzā Hasan Akkāsbāshi, Poets in Shiraz, c. 1895, albumen print,

Collection Mansour Sane, Shiraz.
PHOTOS 257

Figure 58 Abd al-Qāsem ebn al-Nuri, portrait of Amir Kabir, 1889, albumen print,
private collection, taken form Zokā 1997: 118.

Figure 59 Lotus petal and flower design, Ferdowsi’s Shāh-nāme, 37.5 x 29 cm,
Persian, Inju style, Shiraz, 1331, Topkapi Sarayi, Hazine 1479 (5a).
258 PHOTOS

Figure 60 Whirling arabesque design and

illuminated page decorations, Gharā’eb al-
seghar by Navā’i. 108 x 8 cm. Ottoman
Turkish, ca. 1520-30. Or. 13061 (224a).

Figure 61 Amir Seyyed Mohammad Rezā Khān al-Hoseyni (Ferdowsi Photography

Studio), Shiraz, Mirzā Mohammad-Rahim Akkāsbāshi, date unknown, albumen
print, Archive of the Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies, Tehran.
PHOTOS 259

Figure 65 Manucher Khān Akkās,

Manuchehr Hasan Ali Khān Garusi
(Amir Nezām), c. 1886, albumen
print, private collector, taken from
Zokā 1997: 195.

Figure 66 Manucher Khān Akkās,

Mozaffar al-Din Mirzā, prince in
Tabriz, c. 1886, albumen print, pri-
vate collector, taken from Zokā 1997:
194.
260 PHOTOS

Figure 67 Amir Qajar, Several

children of Fath Ali Shah, date
unknown, albumen print, Golestān
Palace Library, Tehran.

Figure 68 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar,

daughter of the prince Hajj Bahā al-
Dowle, c. 1890s, albumen print, size,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.
PHOTOS 261

Figure 69 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar,

Mirzā Hoseyn Khān Mo’tamen al-
Molk, c. 1890s, albumen print, size,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.

Figure 70 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar,

Mozaffar al-Din Shah, c. 1896, albu-
men print, Golestān Palace Library,
Tehran.
262 PHOTOS

Figure 71 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar,

Abdollāh Hoseyn Mirzā Farmān Farmā
and Seyyed Ahmad Monshibāshi Atabak,
c. 1893, albumen print, Golestān Palace
Library, Tehran.

Figure 72 Mirzā Jafar Akkāsbashi, Nāser al-Din Shah and his sons, c. 1888,
albumen print, taken from Zokā 1997: 87.
PHOTOS 263

Figure 74 Unknown Iranian

photographer, Āqā Seyyed
Mohammad Mojtahed
Tabātabā’i, c. 1915, albumen
print, private collection.

Figure 75 Abd al-Qāsem ebn

al-Nuri, Fāzel Sharbiyāni
Edamelboje, c. 1889, albumen
print, size, Golestān Palace
Library, Tehran, taken form Zokā
1997: 118.
264 PHOTOS

Figure 76 Abd al-Qāsem ebn

al-Nuri, Mirzā-ye Sharestāni,
c. 1897, Golestān Palace Library,
Tehran, taken form Afshar 1992:
164.

Figure 77 Gholām-Hoseyn Derakhshān, dervish, c. 1930s, albumen print, Parisa

Damandan Collection.
PHOTOS 265

Figure 78 Kitagawa Utamaro,

A Married Woman Inspects Her
Black Teeth in a Mirror, Ukiyo-e
painting, Museum für
Ostasiatisches Kunst, Cologne.

Figure 79 Yokoyama
Matsusaburo, Portrait of Nitta
Tomi, c. 1874, albumen print, 10
x 7,2 cm, Yokoyama Family
Collection.
266 PHOTOS

Figure 80 Yokoyama
Matsusaburo, Portrait of Nitta
Tomi, c. 1872, albumen print,
10 x 7,2 cm, Yokoyama Family
Collection.

Figure 81 Yokoyama
Matsusaburo, Portrait
Yamamoto Rempei, disciple of
Yokoyama Matsusaburo,
c. 1874, albumen print and oil
painting, Yokoyama Family
Collection.
PHOTOS 267

Figure 82 Kojima Ryua, collage of Kojima Ryua and his family, c. 1873, private
collection.

Figure 83 Kojima Ryua, self

portrait, 1870s, private
collection.
268 PHOTOS

Figure 84 Ahmad Ali Khan,

Portrait of Nawāb Raj Begum
Sāhibah of Oudh, c. 1855. Salt
print, 12.2 x 9.8 cm, overall
29.8 x 21.4 cm, British Library
OIOC Photo 500 (3).

Figure 85 Postural diagram by Hewes, taken from Hewes 1957: 125.

PHOTOS 269

Figure 88 Youth with flower, Safavid

Period, 1630s, ink on paper, H x W: 15.1 x 8.5
cm (5 15/16 x 3 3/8 in), Freer Gallery of Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.:
Purchase 1953.22

Figure 89 The Silken Image of Rustam Shown to his Granfather Sam, Painting
from Muhammad Juki’s manuscript of Ferdawsi’s Shāh-nāme, Herat, ca. 1440,
Royal Asiatic Society, London, MS 239, fol. 30v.
270 PHOTOS

Figure 90 Mohammad Sādiq (signed

Yā Sādiq al-Va’d), Shiraz, 1769/70, A
Girl Playing a Mandolin, oil on canvas,
formely collection of M. Forugi, Tehran.

Figure 91 Mohammad Hassan Qajar, luti bāshi and two mārgirs, c. 1893, albumen
print, 20.7 x 18.3 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 1357, Photo 2.
PHOTOS 271

Figure 92 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, group of musicians from Kashimir, c. 1865, albumen

print, 20.8 x 15.5 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 133, Photo 66.

Figure 93 Ya’qub Akkāsbāshi, self portrait, c. 1882, albumen print, private

collection.
272 PHOTOS

Figure 94 Nāser al-Din Shah, Anis al-Dowle, c. 1871, albumen print, 7.2 x 6.7 cm,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.

Figure 95 Rezā Akkāsbāshi,

Jamin al-Dawle, c. 1865, albu-
men print, 20.4 x 15.4 cm,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran,
Album 133, Photo 9.
PHOTOS 273

Figure 97 Unknown photogra-

pher, Child squatting on balus-
trade, c. 1880s, albumen print,
private collection.

Figure 98 Mirzā Habibollāh

Chehrehnegār, Child with chair
and flower pot in Shiraz,
c. 1910s-20s, albumen print,
private collection.
274 PHOTOS

Figure 99 Luigi Montabone, the crown-prinze Mozzafar al-Din Mirzā Qajar with
his most important advisers, c. 1862, albumen print, 21.3 x 26.6 cm, Royal
Collections, The Hague, The Netherlands, inv. Nr. FA 0603-17.

Figure 100 Mohammad Hassan

Qajar, A man holding a flower,
c. 1893, albumen print, taken from
Zokā 1997: 120.
PHOTOS 275

Figure 101 Ferdowsi Studio, men

holding flowers, two qashqais,
c. 1931, Shiraz, Archive of the
Institute for Iranian Contemporary
Historical Studies.

Figure 102 Ernst Hoeltzer, three mullahs with flowers, c. 1880, albumen print,
Parisa Damandan Collection.
276 PHOTOS

Figure 103 Photographer un-

known, Abd al-Qāsem Ghaffāri,
date unknown, albumen print,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.

Figure 104 Unknown photo-

grapher, Āghā Mohammad
Khāje (eunuc) better known as
Faqir al-Ghameh, date unknown,
albumen print, Golestān Palace
Library, Tehran.
PHOTOS 277

Figure 105 Unknown photographer, Pond of water, c. 1890s, albumen print, taken
from Afshar 1992: 256.

Figure 106 Unknown photographer, Pond of water, c. 1890s, albumen print, taken
from Sane 2004: 66.
278 PHOTOS

Figure 107 Mirzā Habibollāh Chehrehnegār, Group of men with pots of flowers, in
Shiraz, c. 1918, Mansour Sane Collection.

Figure 108 Mirzā Ahmad

Khan Chehreh-Namā, man
praying, date unknown, albumen
print, Parisa Damandan
Collection.
PHOTOS 279

Figure 109 Nāser al-Din Shah, page of an album, c. 1879, albumen print,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.
Photographs clockwise (starting photograph on the left side):
Nāser al-Din Shah, Turān Agha, c. 1879, 14 x 10 cm, Album 289, Photo 4-2.
Nāser al-Din Shah, Mohammad Khān Khāje, c. 1879, 10.2 x 5 cm, Album 289,
Photo 4-1.
Nāser al-Din Shah, Shah’s wife, c. 1879, 14 x 10 cm, Album 289, Photo 4-4.
Nāser al-Din Shah, Bigam Khānom and Bi-Mesāl Khānom, c. 1879, 11 x 10.5 cm,
Album 289, Photo 4-5.
Nāser al-Din Shah, Nāser al-Din Shah, self-portrait, c. 1879, 13 x 5.7 cm, Album 289,
Photo 4-3.
280 PHOTOS

Figure 110 Nāser al-Din Shah, Fāteme Sultān Tarchi and Zahrā Sultān, c. 1865,
albumen print, 10.8 x 5.8 cm and 9.5 x 5.8 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran,
Album 362, Photos 17-2 and 17-1.

Figure 111 Ernst Hoeltzer, women eating pilav and melon, c. 1880s, albumen
print, Hotz photo-collection hosted at the University Library in Leiden, Hotz Album
11: 60.
PHOTOS 281

Figure 112 Antoin Sevruguin, Persian

toilet, c. 1890s, albumen print,
Museum of Ethnology, Leiden.

Figure 113 Antoin Sevruguin, naked woman, c. 1890s, albumen print, Museum of
Ethnology, Leiden.
282 PHOTOS

Figure 114 Plot of Praetorius Figure 115 Shiraz canon, by Grace

Codex Miniatures, by Emmy Wellesz Dunham Guest 1949: 29.
and Kurt Blauensteiner, in
“Illustration zur einer Geschicte
Timurs”.

Figure 116 Modified Shiraz canon, by

Grace Dunham Guest 1949: 29.
PHOTOS 283

Figure 117 Plot by Charyhar Adle. Modular composition and “trace correcteur” of
Shah Abbās attacking the Uzbek army, from Fotuhāt-e Hamāyun, 1600-05, fol. 88r.
taken from Adle 1975: 90.

Figure 118 Illustration of William Farish’s isometrical perspective, taken from

Krikke 1996.
284 PHOTOS

Figure 119 Illustration of the difference between axonometry as it is used in

Chinese painting (left) and linear perspective (right). Taken from Krikke 1996.

Figure 130 Unknown Iranian photographer, Group of students from Nawbar

school, Tabriz, c. 1890s, taken from Afshar 1992: 307.
PHOTOS 285

Figure 131 Unknown Iranian photographer, Moshiriyye school, c. 1880s, Yazd, al-
bumen print, private collection.

Figure 132 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar, celebrations of the birthday of Fāteme at the
house of one minister, c. 1894, 25 x 17.5 cm, taken from Zokā 1997: plate 60.
286 PHOTOS

Figure 133 Unknown photographer, Governor of Kerman with friends and collea-
gues, date unknown, taken from Afshar 1992: 206.

Figure 134 Mirzā Mehdi Khān

Chereh-Namā, military men,
c. 1920s, Parisa Damandan
Collection.
PHOTOS 287

Figure 135 Nāser al-Din Shah, Iran al-Moluk, one of Nāser al-Din Shah’s daugh-
ters wives (the woman on the left side), date unknown, Golestān Palace Library,
Album 286, Tehran, taken from Afshar 1992: 205.

Figure 136 Nāser al-Din Shah, One of Nāser al-Din Shah’s wives (the woman on
the left side), c. 1870s, Golestān Palace Library, Album 286, Tehran, taken from
Afshar 1992: 55.
288 PHOTOS

Figure 137 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, group of mullahs, date unknown, albumen print,
taken from Tahmasbpour 2007: 13.

Figure 138 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, group of mullahs, date unknown, albumen print,
Museum of Photography, Tehran.
PHOTOS 289

Figure 139 Unknown photo-

grapher, Hājji Hoseyn Quli Khān
Nuri Mostowfi, Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, date unknown,
albumen print, taken from
Afshar 1992: 120.

Figure 140 Nāser al-Din Shah, Anis al-Dowle and Shirazi Kuchak, wives of the
Shah, between 1865-1875, Album 289, page 28, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.
290 PHOTOS

Figure 141 Unknown Iranian photographer, Mohammad Ebrahim Khān

Me’mārbāshi, c. 1886, taken from Afshar 1992: 60.

Figure 143 Francis Fritz, Self-portrait in Turkish Summer Costume (sic), 1857, albu-
men print, Permanent loan from the Jerusalem Foundation, The Israel Museum,
Jerusalem, L76.27/01.
PHOTOS 291

Figure 144 Abd al-Qāsem ebn

al-Nuri, self-portrait, c. 1900s,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran,
taken from Zokā 1997: 117.

Figure 145 The National

Geographic Magazine, April
1921, Washington, cover.
292 PHOTOS

Figure 146 The National Geographic Magazine, April 1921, Washington: 352.
PHOTOS 293

Figure 147 The National Geographic Magazine, April 1921, Washington: 353.
294 PHOTOS

Figure 148 The National Geographic Magazine, April 1921, Washington: 392.
PHOTOS 295

Figure 149 The National Geographic Magazine, April 1921, Washington,

advertisement.
296 PHOTOS

Figure 150 The National

Geographic Magazine, April
1921, Washington, advertisement.

Figure 151 The National

Geographic Magazine, April
1921, Washington, advertisement.
PHOTOS 297

Figure 152 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Shirazi-ye Kuchak and Farangi with Aghā Salmān,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.

Figure 153 Movassaq Karimi,

portrait of two small children,
unknown dates, Museum of
Photography, Tehran.
298 PHOTOS

Figure 154 Boudoir studio,

untitled, 1904, Bahman Bayani
Collection, Tehran.

Figure 157 Abdollāh Mirzā Qajar, Ja’far Qoli Khān, c. 1902, private collection,
taken from Zokā 1997: 82
PHOTOS 299

Figure 158 Mohammad Jafar

Mirzā, Nosrat al-Din Mirzā as a
child, c. 1887, private collection,
taken from Zokā 1997: 87.

Figure 159 Luigi Montabone, Grandi personaggi di corte, c. 1862, albumen print,
24.1 x 29.4 cm, Royal Collections, The Hague, The Netherlands, inv. Nr. FA 0603-53.
300 PHOTOS

Figure 160 Antoin Sevruguin, dervish, c. 1880s, albumen print, private collection.

Figure 161 Antoin Sevruguin, dervish, c. 1880s, albumen print, private collection.
PHOTOS 301

Figure 162 Antoin Sevruguin, The Persian Tonsure, c. 1880s, albumen print,
Leiden University Library, Hotz 15:32.

Figure 163 Antoin Sevruguin, The Persian Tonsure, c. 1880s, albumen print,
Ethnology Museum in Berlin.
302 PHOTOS

Figure 164 Antoin Sevruguin,

massage, c. 1880s, albumen print,
Museum of Ethnology, Zurich.

Figure 165 Abdullah Frères, untitled, c. 1880, taken from Pérez 1997: 106.
PHOTOS 303

Figure 166 Scenes and types,

Nr. 62, Moorish bust, postcard,
taken from Alloula 1986: 123.

Figure 167 Scenes and types,

Nr. 162, Arabian woman with
the Yachmak, postcard, taken
from Alloula 1986: 126.
304 PHOTOS

Figure 168 Nāser al-Din Shah, One of

Nāser al-Din Shah’s wife, date unknown, al-
bumen print, Golestān Palace Library,
Tehran, taken from Tahmasbpour 2001: 45.

Figure 169 W. Ordén, N 1801, Persian Shia, c. 1886, albumen print,

21 x 16.4 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-4946.
PHOTOS 305

Figure 170 W. Ordén, N 1890, The Armenians of Tabriz and Isphahan, c. 1886,
albumen print, 21.5 x 16.5 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-4983

Figure 171 W. Ordén, N 1872, Central Asia Types, c. 1886, albumen print,
21.5 x 16.8 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF-5037.
306 PHOTOS

Figure 172 W. Ordén, N 1875, The oriental princes and their dignataries, c.1886,
albumen print, Anahita Gallery, Santa Fe, AG 2076.

Figure 174 Rezā Akkāsbāshi, Sahhāfbāshi, date unknown, albumen print,

17.9 x 13.4 cm, Golestān Palace Library, Tehran, Album 189, Photo 29.
PHOTOS 307

Figure 175 Adele Perlmutter, Nāser al-Din Shah, 1873, albumen print,
10.5 x 6.5 cm, Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna, VF 56222.

Figure 176 Mirzā Mehdi Khān Chehreh-Namā, group portrait, c. 1910s, albumen
print, 9 x 12 cm, Parisa Damandan Collection.
308 PHOTOS

Figure 177 Ali Khān Vali Hākem, Seyyed Ali Darvandi, c. 1880-90, albumen print,
courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University.

Figure 178 Ali Khān Vali Hākem, Mirzā Mohammad Sādeq Sāhebnaqsh,
c. 1880-90, albumen print, courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard
University.
PHOTOS 309

Figure 179 Ali Khān Vali

Hākem, Mirzā Ali Khān Sartip,
c. 1880-90, albumen print, cour-
tesy of Special Collections, Fine
Arts Library, Harvard University.

Figure 180 Ali Khān Vali Hākem, Ali Āqā Akkās, c. 1880-90, albumen print, cour-
tesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University.
310 PHOTOS

Figure 181 Mohammad Hasan

Qajar, Hajji Mirzā Ahmad Kermāni,
c. 1890, albumen print, taken from
Afshar 1992: 106.

Figure 182 Mohammad Hasan Qajar, Hajji Mohammad Ali Sayyāh Mahalāti,
c. 1890, albumen print, taken from Afshar 1992: 106.
PHOTOS 311

Figure 183 Unknown court

photographer, Mozaffar al-Din
Shah, c. 1900, albumen print,
Golestān Palace Library, Tehran.

Figure 184 Unknown photo-

grapher, couple in studio, date
unknown, albumen print,
University Library, Tehran.
PHOTOS 313

Figure 53 Attributed to Bihzad, portrait, Sultān-Hoseyn Mirzā. Folio from a manu-

script, c. 1500-1525. Ink, color and gold paper; folio: 34.3 x 37.2 cm, Arthur M. Sackler
Museum. Gift from John Goelet, formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier,
1858.59. Photo: Imaging Department @ President and Fellows of Harvard College.
314 PHOTOS

Figure 54 Seated figure holding a cup, mid 17th century, colour wash and ink on
paper, H x W: 35.9 x 23.5 cm (14 1/8 x 9 ¼ in), Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Bequest of Adrienne Minassian,
S1998.17.
PHOTOS 315

Figure 56 Mo’in Mosavvar, Rezā-

Abbāsi painting a picture of a European
man, started 1635 and finished 1673,
Robert Garret Collection of Islamic
Manuscripts, No 96 G, Manuscripts
Division, Department of Rare Books and
Special Collections, Princeton University
Library, H: 18,8 cm x W: 10,4 cm.

Figure 62 Prince Mohammad Ali

Mirzā Dowlatshāh, Jafar, oil on can-
vas, 1820, H x W (overall): 208 x 107
cm (81 7/8 x 42 1/8 in), The Art and
History Collection, courtesy of the
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution,
LTS2003.1.9.
316 PHOTOS

Figure 63 Artist unknown, Fath Ali

Shah seated on the Sun Throne,
Tehran, 18th century, Collection of
Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan,
Geneva.

Figure 64 Signed by Mehr Ali, Portrait of

Fath Ali Shah Seated, 1813-14, oil on canvas,
253 x 118 cm, State Hermitage Museum, St
Petersburg, VR-1108. Photograph © The
State Hermitage Museum. Photo by
Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets, Yuri
Molodkovets.
PHOTOS 317

Figure 73 A girl acrobat balancing

on a knife, c. 1840, Shirin painter,
127 x 80 cm, Amery Collection
(Museum of Art in Tehran), taken
from Falk 1973: plate 43.

Figure 86 Fath Ali Shah, oil on

canvas. Tehran 1798-99. London,
Oriental and India Office Library
Collections, Foster 116.
318 PHOTOS

Figure 87 Attributed to Mehr Ali, Fath Ali

Shah Seated on a Chair Throne, Tehran, cir-
ca 1800-1806, Oil on canvas: 227, 5 x 131 cm,
Musée du Louvre, Paris, Section Islamique,
on loan from the Musée National de
Versailles, MV638.

Figure 96 Luigi Montabone, portrait of Nāser al-Din Shah, three quarter length,
sitting with sword, c. 1862, hand-colored albumen, 30.1 x 24.0 cm, Royal Collections,
The Hague, The Netherlands, inv. Nr. 0603-03
PHOTOS 319

Figure 120 Humāy and Humāyun

Meeting in a Garden, ca. 1430-40,
Miniature from a manuscript of the
Khamse of Khwāju Kirmāni, Musée des
Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Inv. 3727.
Photograph © Musée des Arts Décoratifs.
Photograph by Jean Tholance.

Figure 121 Artist unknown, The court of Fath Ali Shah, c. 1815, Opaque watercolor
and gold on paper. Central panel 60 x 52 cm, the Art & History Trust, courtesy of the
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, LTS 1997.5.1-3.
320 PHOTOS

Figure 122 Unknown artist, Nighttime in a Palace, probably a folio from a manu-
script, c. 1540, opaque watercolor, gold and silver on paper; image: 28.6 x 20 cm
(11 ¼ x 7 7/8 in.), Harvard Art Museums/ Arthur M. Sackler Museum.
Gift of John Goelet, formerly in the collection of Louis J. Cartier, 1958.76. Photo:
Katya Kallsen @ President and Fellows of Harvard College.
PHOTOS 321

Figure 123 Joneyd Naqqāsh Sultāni, Wedding Celebration of Prince Homāy and
Princess Homāyun, from Divān by Khwāju Kirmāni, 1396, British Library, London,
(fol. 45v; Add. 18113).
322 PHOTOS

Figure 124 Behzād, Hārun al-Rashid in a Bathhouse, from a Khamse by Nezāmi,

The British Library, 1494, London (fol. 27 v; Or. 6810).

Figure 125 Design schema of fig. 124, after Zain.

PHOTOS 323

Figure 126 Behzād, Zoleykhā

attempts to seduce Yusof, from a
Bustān by Sa’di, Cairo, National
Library (General Egyptian Book
Organization), Abad Farsi, 908,
fol. 52 v, Heart, H: 25.4 cm;
W: 15.8 cm.

Figure 127 Design schema of

fig. 126, after Zain.
324 PHOTOS

Figure 128 Funeral Procession,

attributed to Behzād, from Mantiq
al-teyr (The Language of the Birds)
by Attar, 1483, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, NY, Fletcher Fund,
1963 (fol. 35; 63.210.35).

Figure 129 Design schema of

fig. 128, after Zain.
PHOTOS 325

Figure 142 Photographer and painter unknown, Landowner who loves music, ca.
1885, albumen, opaque watercolour, 22kt. Gold; Alkazi Collection of Photography,
New Delhi, India.

Graphic 1 Schema of positions sitter versus photographer in studio portrait photo-

graphy. Elaborated by the author.
326 PHOTOS

Figure 155 Luigi Montabone, Soldati Persiani, c. 1862, hand-colored albumin print,
25.0 x 20.0 cm, Royal Collections, The Hague, The Netherlands, inv. FA Nr. 0603-54.
PHOTOS 327

Figure 156 Luigi Montabone,

Nāser al-Din Shah, c. 1862,
hand-colored albumen print,
sheet: 36.7 x 27.6 cm, image only:
19.3 x 11.5 cm, Royal Collections,
The Hague, The Netherlands,
inv. Nr. FA 0603-02.

Figure 173 Abdollāh Mirzā

Qajar, Nāser al-Din Mirza,
c. 1886, albumen print,
24.1 x 18.5 cm, lithography
hand-overpainted (from an
earlier photograph), Golestān
Palace Library, Tehran, Album
1142, Photo 7.
328 PHOTOS

Graphic 2 Schema