Mavi Boncuk |
Parc Ottoman. La Mosquée |
Getty Source [2] negative between April 1–November 3, 1867[1]
Displaying the Orient | Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs
Zeynep Çelik | UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS | Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1992 The Regents of the University of California
[1] The International Exposition of 1867 (French: Exposition universelle [d'art et d'industrie] de 1867) was the second world's fair to be held in Paris, from 1 April to 3 November 1867. A number of nations were represented at the fair. Following a decree of Emperor Napoleon III, the exposition was prepared as early as 1864, in the midst of the renovation of Paris, marking the culmination of the Second French Empire. Visitors included Tsar Alexander II of Russia, a brother of the King William and Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, Prince Metternich and Franz Josef of Austria, Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz, and the Khedive of Egypt Isma'il.
As representatives of Islamic urban settings, Ottoman and
Egyptian quarters were placed adjacent to each other in 1867 in Paris, and,
despite their independent designs, they formed an ensemble: visitors could
meander through the Egyptian street into the Turkish square. Both quarters were
deliberately made irregular to reflect the tortuous streets with many dead ends
of Islamic cities. The choice of an irregular urban fabric to represent
Istanbul and Cairo at the fairs reflects one of the dilemmas of Ottoman and
Egyptian officials and their European advisors. Even though in both Istanbul
and Cairo the 1860s were marked by an intense campaign to regularize the
network of streets, to create monumental avenues and vistas, and to establish
large urban squares—all lessons learned from Haussmann's rebuilding of
Paris—the exposition planners turned to the past, to an image that they
considered outdated but that the West associated with Islam.
The definition of cultural identity was much debated among the Westernizing Turks and Egyptians during this intense period of sociocultural transformation. Some called for maintaining the old cultural forms while adopting Western technology; others wanted either to incorporate new elements into the local culture, thereby creating a rupture between the old and the new, or to evaluate and redefine their self-identity according to Western views. The architectural representations of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire in Paris in 1867 belong to the latter trend.
Gateway to the Turkish quarter, Paris, 1867 ( L'Exposition
universelle de 1867 illustrée ).
The Ottoman section, designed by Léon Parvillée, was composed of three buildings—a mosque, a residential structure called the Pavilion du Bosphore, and a bath—around a loosely defined open space. In the center of this space was a fountain (Fig. 24). The mosque represented the religious sphere; the Pavilion du Bosphore, the homefront; the bath, social and cultural ritual; and the fountain, the public sphere. On the occasion of Sultan Abdülaziz's visit, a triumphal gate to the quarter was erected; with its formal
The layout of the Turkish quarter was deliberately irregular, even though the basic premise—a square open space with a fountain in the center, surrounded by buildings with symmetrical facades—did not call for it. This arrangement was derived not from Turkish precedent but from French academicism. The idea was to create by irregularity an "authentic" and "picturesque appearance."
Turkish café, Paris, 1867 (Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes et de
a Photographie).
Sultan Abdülaziz's visit to Napoleon III in the Elysée Palace, Paris, 1867 ( L'Illustration,
13 July 1867).
Among the Ottoman officers at the 1867 fair was Salaheddin
Bey, the head commissioner of the Ottoman Empire, whose book, La Turquie à
l'Exposition universelle de 1867 (Paris, 1867), presented the Ottoman displays.
Like Charles Edmond's L'Egypte à l'Exposition universelle de 1867 in format and
contents, Salaheddin Bey's book also discussed the displays, summarizing
through them the history of the Ottoman Empire and its participation in modern
civilization. The overall tone was imperial: the dedication was to Sultan
Abdülaziz, whose visit was compared to an act of the caliph Harun al-Rashid ten
centuries earlier. Harun al-Rashid, to acknowledge his friendship with the
"greatest monarch of the Occident," had sent him valuable presents.
Now, at the invitation of the emperor of France, Abdülaziz was honoring France
with his own presence.
The imperial and sanguine tone of this document did not obscure the foreign influences that had infiltrated Ottoman culture.[78] In this respect, it is an important text, which illustrates how the Easterner affirmed an image of his culture constructed by Europeans. Salaheddin Bey's goal was to present the Ottoman Empire as modern and advanced; to ensure the acceptance of his work in the West, he adopted European conventions. For example, when describing the Ottoman pavilions, he often employed the vocabulary of rationalist architects, noting that the structures were designed according to certain scientific "principles."[79] Yet, Salaheddin Bey's observations were so much influenced by Western thought that they reflected its contradictions: in his analyses he paid lip service to rationalism while writing passionately about exoticism, as if he were a romantic outsider fantasizing about the unknown. Hence he noted that the buildings on the Champ de Mars were "animated by a frank and naive gaiety,"[80] but he also complained that despite expert construction, they failed to convey the flavor of the real Orient. The mosque of the Champ de Mars, for example, lacked "the broad landscape, the great sun, and the calm sea—all the poetic things that make a beautiful frame in the Orient." Out of context, the building "lost the marvelous placement it enjoyed back there, in Bursa, surrounded by shady gardens and pretty houses in painted wood with windows embellished by covered balconies, or chahnichirs, and frequented by a crowd in gaudily colorful clothes."
Describing a typical crowd in a mosque, Salaheddin Bey echoed the familiar tone of European travelogues:
The pious imams and the simple believers, barefoot as a sign
of deep respect, maintain a meditative silence and pray by striking their
foreheads against the ground to adore God. The muezzin, in his clear, sharp
voice, casts to the four winds from the height of the minaret the profession of
the Muslim faith, the formula of belief La illah el Allah! Mohammed reçoul
Allah! There is only one God! Mohammed is the prophet of God!
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The Ottoman displays in 1867 were enriched by numerous
photographs by the Abdullah brothers of Istanbul depicting Turkish life and a
cross section of the population; by a watercolor portrait of the sultan by
Amadeo Presiozi; by French artists' paintings of Ottoman subjects; and by three
works (Gypsy Camp, Zeibek on the Lookout, and Death of Zeibek ) by the Ottoman
painter Osman Hamdi, who at the time was studying under Gustave Boulanger and
Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris. Osman Hamdi
continued to play a significant role in representing nineteenth-century Ottoman
art and culture at world expositions after 1867. His paintings, often included
in the Ottoman displays, contributed to the making of a new Ottoman image.
Osman Hamdi is a controversial figure in Ottoman art and intellectual history. His Westernized upbringing and his education in France were reflected in his vision of Ottoman society, yet Osman Hamdi maintained a considerable critical distance. Although his technique and the settings he painted belong to the Orientalist school, his topics, as statements about Ottoman culture and so-
ciety in the new age, distinguish him from the artists of this school. Osman Hamdi's men and women—dressed in the colorful garments of the Orientalist mode and placed in "authentic" architectural settings—are thoughtful, questioning, and acting human beings (Fig. 16) who display none of the passivity and submissiveness of Eastern subjects characteristic of the Orientalist tradition. The Orientalist paraphernalia in Osman Hamdi's paintings comments on the "difference" between Ottoman society and other societies rather than its "otherness," which European artists depicted.[86] To this extent Osman Hamdi's paintings are critiques of the Orientalist school by a "resistant" voice, whose power derives from the painter's thorough acquaintance with the school's techniques and conventions. These paintings are carefully composed essays on Ottoman society, expressed in a Western vocabulary.
Osman Hamdi also contributed to a book, Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie en 1873 (Constantinople, 1873), published on the occasion of the Universal Exposition in Vienna, which documented Ottoman costumes according to class and region, with photographs by Pascal Sébah . The photographs all had the same format, and all were taken against a bare wall. The scenographic backgrounds of popular postcards and Orientalist paintings were deliberately avoided. This was a scholarly study of typology, aimed at an international audience:[89] "For artists, this will be an important mine of materials, for people of fashion, an interesting and instructive recreation; meanwhile the philosopher and the savant will find here numerous topics for beneficial reflection and fruitful study."
Les Costumes populaires went beyond documentation to show "the diversity in the unity" of Ottoman culture. The authors thus differentiated costume, which responded to conditions such as climate or profession, from clothing styles that changed constantly according to fashion.[92] But even as they revised one stereotype of Ottoman culture by insisting on its richness and pluralism, they repeated a false generalization common to European interpretations: by failing to note transformations over time and by characterizing "costumes" as timeless, they froze the culture historically.
The second Ottoman publication for the 1873 exposition, Usul-u mimari-i Osmani or L'Architecture ottomane (Constantinople, 1873), focused on Ottoman architecture. A collaborative effort by Marie de Launay, Montani Effendi (an Italian architect), Boghos Effendi Chachian (an Armenian architect), and M. Maillard (a French architect), the book illustrated the superior qualities of Ottoman monuments and reintroduced them to modern architects. The idea for this work came from Edhem Hamdi Pasa, Osman Hamdi's brother, who was minister of public works and president of the Ottoman imperial commission for the exposition. Edhem Pasa specified that the book should deal with the "rules of Ottoman architecture" and should contain "all the necessary drawings in addition to the historical and artistic descriptions of Ottoman monuments."
The format of Usul-u mimari-i Osmani followed that of similar books on Western architecture. The book discussed the degeneration of Ottoman architecture in the nineteenth century and suggested remedies. A "Historical Précis" of the most important Ottoman monuments analyzed the causes of their decline. French architects, engineers, and artists were seen as a destructive influence, one that had led to a loss of purity in Ottoman architecture. The authors accused the nineteenth-century architects of Istanbul of experimenting with all known styles: "Trying in vain to adopt them, sometimes one by one, sometimes in a confusion that is ridiculous and inadequate to the requirements of Ottoman buildings—religious and other—they produce nothing but monstrous and dull designs." If Ottoman architecture continued to imitate European styles, it would soon disappear. During Abdülaziz's reign, however, some positive tendencies had emerged, and a "national art" based on a "renaissance" of Ottoman architecture, an "école néo-turque," was in sight.
A chapter titled "Technical Documents" outlined the rules of Ottoman architecture. With Vitruvius's system of classification as a model, the Ottoman orders were divided into the ordre echafriné, ordre brechiforme, and ordre crystallisé, corresponding to the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. Each was described in detail, and each description ended with a few Vitruvian statements: the ordre echafriné was appropriate for the lower levels of galleries, for shops, and for every building type that required simplicity. The brechiforme was severe and heavy and was not used in civil architecture. The playful crystallisé was suitable for the interiors of civic buildings.[95]
The authors argued that the Ottoman orders, which had created many beautiful buildings in the past, should still be used because "they presented more subtlety than the commonly known classical orders." They believed that by reorganizing the principles of Ottoman architecture into a doctrine, they were serving art in general.[96] Their objective was to make a place for Ottoman architecture within the wide spectrum of Western architectural styles and to encourage the use, at home and abroad, of a neo-Turkish style.
A third book prepared under the patronage of the Ottoman government for the Viennese exposition was Le Bosphore et Constantinople (Vienna, 1873), by P. A. Dethier, the director of the Imperial Museum in Istanbul and a member of the Ottoman commission to the exposition. He noted that the Viennese exposition offered a good stage from which to present the Ottoman capital to people from around the world. The book covered historic (Byzantine and classical Ottoman) monuments as well as the major nineteenth-century buildings, such as the university and the Ministry of Defense.
These three Ottoman publications resulted from serious and systematic studies that followed Western precedents and formats. They reflected the larger goal of generating respect in the West for the Ottoman Empire, which would continue to maintain its cultural identity. For similar reasons a large collection of Ottoman photographs was brought to the United States in 1893 for the World's Columbian Exposition. Sultan Abdülhamid II donated fifty-one albums to the "National Library"[97] of the United States; at least some of them went to Chicago as part of the Ottoman display.[98] As propaganda prepared under imperial orders, the 1,819 photographs constitute a reliable record of the prevailing Ottoman self-image. They highlighted the beauty of the landscape, the grandeur of monuments (Byzantine and Ottoman, including examples from the nineteenth century), and the development of modern institutions (schools, factories, hospitals, and military establishments). Perhaps to correct the dominant Western view, images of "harem girls" and "backward occupations" were omitted.
[2] In the 1980s, Pierre de Gigord, the son of a wealthy French businessman, began buying antique photographs in the markets of Istanbul. Concentrating on the late 1800s and early 1900s, the photographs came in all kinds: daguerreotypes, albumen prints, lantern slides, glass negatives, gelatin silver prints, paper-mounted postcards and photo albums. Gigord eventually amassed one of the most important collections of images of the Ottoman Empire in its waning years: 6,000 images, more than half of which have now been digitised and made freely available from the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. They show Istanbul's famous palaces and fortresses, as well as its souks and fish markets; posed studio portraits; and sultans, dervishes, firemen, and families at home.
The collection came to the Institute in 1995, in the early days of its establishment.
A strange accident of circumstances has made these photographs even more significant: they give a rare glimpse into the Armenian population of Istanbul, most of whom were forcibly dispelled – or killed – after 1915 in the Armenian Genocide. This is because of the division of labour that developed under the Ottomans. Many Armenians had been employed as chemists and goldsmiths, giving them a facility and knowledge of chemical reactions that allowed them to work easily with photography when it were first introduced.
A number of the main studios in Istanbul, such as Pascal Sebah, Gulmez, and Abdullah Freres, were run by Armenians, giving the Armenian people an outsize representation in photographic documentation – as well as in this collection – that has become all the more important since the erasure of their history within Turkey. Many of the images in the Gigord Collection come from the studios on one street, the Grand Rue de Pera, a swanky avenue that hosted embassies and acted as a meeting point for intellectuals. Photography studios opened there in the mid-1800s, and Gigord's Collection contains some of the portraits that local middle and upper-class individuals, as well as tourists, would have posed for.
Other images are like snapshots, showing the life of the city – laundry-hanging, children playing, men serving drinks in brass samovars carried on their backs. The types of photograph themselves also vary; it wasn't until the 1890s that one method of capturing images became standardised, which was thanks to George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak roll of film, with his easy-to-use Brownie camera.
The diversity for the Ottoman collection was a great challenge in the digitisation process. Some hand-painted images were individually photographed, while a suite of 10 albumen prints – a technique that uses egg-whites to produce the images – was combined into one extraordinary panoramic view of the Istanbul skyline in 1878. And the images that Gigord acquired as albums were digitised individually and in their original layout, so that they retain their album form. "Which is very important," stresses Isotta. "Because albums have a structural logic and are a way of telling their own story."
These images date from 1852 to 1950, setting most of them in the public domain. The only images the Institute couldn’t make available were press photographs, for which they could not determine the copyright, and archival documentation about the photography studios. In total, around 3,750 files have been put online. This means that the Gigord Collection joins a number of digital initiatives that are – in an as-yet unplanned way – assisting scholars of the Middle East, for whom materials and access are frequently dispersed or unavailable. SOURCE