Beirut, Syria (now Lebenon)
Photographer Abraham Sarrafian was joined by his brothers Boghos and Samuel to take, publish, and distribute photographs. Beirut was then part of the Ottoman Empire and they worked there through the years of the French Mandate that was established following World War One.
They captured about 25 percent of all images made of the area stretching from Libya then back to Turkey. They published over 1500 photo-chromolithographic postcards of ethnic types and views.
Among the 120 known editors, the Sarrafian brothers alone produced one fifth of the postcards printed in Lebanon between 1895 and 1930.
Arts and Crafts School, run by the Jesuit Fathers
The Sarrafian brothers may be considered the giants of the postcard, so prolific and varied was their output and so avant-garde, precise and unique was their witness. Photo reporters of another era, the Sarrafian brothers had the genius to be in the right place at the right time, for example at the official opening of the station at the Port of Beirut, as well as the entry into service of the clock at the Main Saraglio (Government Office) in 1900 and of the Hamidieh fountain marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession to the throne of Sultan Hamid. They made a portrait of Sheikh Ibrahim el-Yazigi, founder of the review Al-Bayan.
They were also present for the inauguration of the School of Arts and Crafts attended by the Wali and other notables of the city in 1907, and for the inauguration of the Ottoman Post near Khan Antoun Bey in 1908, also for the official opening of the Asfurieh psychiatric hospital. in 1900.
Their shots covered the liberation of the nationalist prisoners returning from exile in 1908, the bombardment of the city of Beirut by two warships of the Italian fleet and the wreck of the ship Aoun Allah off the port of Beirut in 1912. Later there were the poignant pictures of child victims of the famine of 1916 and ones of Beirut under snow in 1920.
Their inimitable series of daily life in Lebanon covered in turn with total authenticity all the crafts and scenes of town and country, often not without a certain gentle humor. At the As-Sour Square, later Ryad el-Solh Square, at the end of Ramadan it was the custom to celebrate with a traditional procession during which parents carried their circumcised children shoulder high. Finally, they preserved for immortality the old dwellings due for demolition with the widening of the streets of Beirut named Foch and Allenby.
The Sarrafian brothers were also the official photographers of the Syrian Protestant College, later known as the American University of Beirut, for which they published a series of postcards now exceedingly rare.
The Ottoman court was by no means indifferent to the advantages for illustration and propaganda offered by photography. Early after the invention of photography the sultans surrounded themselves with photographers chosen from among the best, generally Christians, but above all members of the Armenian community. The latter really made a great contribution to the development of the arts, crafts and new techniques in the Ottoman Empire. Being unprejudiced against the representation of individuals, members of the Armenian community were widely chosen to be the portraitists of the Empire and they had a near-monopoly of studio photography. Armenian photographers had students in all the principal towns of the Ottoman Empire, the most reputed being Garabedian and Krikorian at Jerusalem, Guiragossian and Sarrafian at Beirut, Berberian at Amman, Halladjian at Haifa and the three brothers Horsep, Viken and Kevork Abdallah at Istanbul. The last-named stood out as among the most illustrious photographers of the first generation. Turks of Armenian origin, the young brothers were early on introduced into the artistic milieu. Kevork (1839-1918) studied art at the Murad Ruphaellian School at Venice, where the children of upper class Armenian families were traditionally sent. Vichen (1820-1920), a painter noted for his miniatures on ivory and mother-of-pearl, worked at the court of the Sultan. After being assistants of the German photographer and chemist Rabagh in the Pera district of Istanbul, the three Atallah brothers decided to purchase his studio in 1858, when Rabagh expressed a desire to go back to Germany.
The technical progress in photography, especially the reduction of the time needed for the exposure and the appearance of snapshots, allowed from 1880 onwards the reduction of the weight of the equipment and the widening of the activities of photographers with more and more scenes taken outside the studios. With the discovery of how to make celluloid, the first artificial plastic material, and the marketing of the Kodak cameras with the slogan at that time famous of “You press the button, we do the rest”, the art of the photographer was greatly speeded up. Used in the place of the sensitive glass plates, which were difficult to prepare and especially to carry about, the flat dry rolls henceforth allowed a large number of photographs to be taken in only a little time.
The Sarrafian brothers were the first to make full use of this great technological advance. They were particularly interested in subjects taken from daily life, ones that they preserved for the future, the crafts, the coffee shops and musicians, with scenes from town and country which today constitute a unique documentation.
The Armenians therefore were the pioneers and principal actors in the history of photography in the Orient. Following the translation of the book of Daguerre into Turkish in 1841, the Armenian photographs played a constructive role in the Middle East and transmitted a chronicle of Ottoman society in the 19th century. While the Western roving photographers took photographs mostly of the archeological remains and biblical sites, the resident photographers took views in their studios or in the populated districts of the big towns. The intense dynamism of the Armenian photographers continued after the break-up of the Empire in 1918. But their worsened political situation and the massacres of which they had been victims led many of them to go elsewhere, and to take the photographic and technical experience to countries of the Near East such as Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and even Iran, where they found safety.