Ottoman History Podcast - Vernacular Photography in Early Republican Turkey

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

with Özge Calafato hosted by Zeinab Azarbadegan | What can family and individual studio photographs tell us about social life in the early Republic of Turkey? In this episode, Özge Calafato highlights the negotiations between the Kemalist state, the photographers, and the people being photographed that led to classed and gendered representation of modern Turkish citizens in vernacular photography. Calafato analyzes not only the image, but also the context of production and the inscriptions written behind photographs. Looking at photos of subjects as ranging from beauty queens and feminist activists to bank employees and soldiers, she considers the production and circulation of photos not only in urban studios and within families but also in rural areas and within friendship groups. « Click for More »

Welcome to Autumn in History Podcast. I'm Zeynep Azar Badugan and in this episode we are talking to Özge Kalafato about her new book Making the Modern Turkish Citizen, Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era. In this book, Özge looks at the making of the modern Turkish citizen through photography. The photos she analyzes are part of the collection she has built throughout four years as part of her role as assistant director at the Akasa Center for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi. She's purchased these photographs from secondhand bookshops and vendors at Izmir and Istanbul. Can you tell us about the first photograph you purchased?

This is a photograph of a couple dancing and the man looks straight into the camera. The woman appears to be a little more shy and it's taken in what looks like a pavilion that was a common structure in a lot of the tea gardens at the time or casino and there are four women in the background looking at the couple. It delineates also the time period that I'm looking at, because this image is actually from 1941, which means that a lot of the impositions of the Kemalist reforms were already in place two decades earlier, but it's still a very good example of how middle-class Turkish citizens negotiated the Kemalist reforms at the time in relation to their own class aspirations, but also under the influence of many other social and cultural trends, more global trends from fashion to foreign movies.

And this image is also striking in the way the inscription on the back says Hayatın en tatlı günleri, which means the sweetest days of life. And I always wondered what it means to have to interpret certain days as the sweetest days of life, but also it's not the sweetest days of my life or our life. days of my life or our life so again this kind of ambiguity as to who wrote this inscription was another striking factor for me and it says gezim also meaning my trip so that was maybe taking on a trip and I think there is a ring on the man's finger. So the level of intimacy, the physical proximity was in a way also regulated through the institution of marriage. Again, showing how Turkish citizens negotiated the making of the modern citizen in the public sphere. And that

also reminds me of an iconic image of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with one of his adoptive daughters Nebile at her wedding again dancing in a dancing pose and I was wondering if the couple was at all thinking about that image or emulating it and those those parallels were also quite remarkable for me so what went into the making of the modern turkish citizen visible in the vernacular photographs that you have analyzed? Key ideals of the Kemalist reforms is to reach the level of civilized nations. So it's really westernization, secularization would be the kind of underlying principle for the Kemalist regime. The westernization and the liberation of women were some of the key ideals

for the Kemalist regime. And as a result, the idea of this modern secular woman, Turkish woman, the new Turkish woman or the Republican woman, Cumhuriyet kadını or yeni Türk Kadını would be put under the spotlight. And this, of course, came with a lot of other complications where the Turkish state, especially throughout the 1930s, imposed this ideal through state feminism, undermining the existing feminist movement and saying, okay, we have state feminism and that's enough. One of the most fascinating examples of negotiations that took place in photography in terms of creating modern Turkish femininities

is the case of Turkish beauty queens from the 1930s. And this was a special time period where the leading Kemalist newspaper, Cumhuriyet newspaper, organized beauty contests each year throughout the 1930s, and then there was a kind of a break for a while. Photography played a very important role for these beauty contests, with the Jumerid newspaper encouraging the candidates to go to a set of studios that were reserved for this contest, So the candidates could have their pictures taken for free in these photo studios in Istanbul. And these photo studios happened to be,

you know, some of the leading studios at the time, including Seba Juayet, Foto Alman, Kanzler, etc. And these photographs were published in the newspapers regularly with readers also sending their votes and then there was a kind of a big buzz around these contests for months so this was a very big entertainment for for the society and the kemalist regime really saw the beauty contest as a great way to promote the new republic to the world without really contemplating on the degree to which women were objectified but they were also pressured to keep their dignity and modesty and chastity, which created a schizophrenic identity, as Shirin Tekeli calls it. So in the case of the beauty queens,

women were allowed to negotiate that chastity to a certain degree, as long as they showed how modern Turkey had become. In the case of Naşide Safet, she was about to become a teacher. She was attending the teacher's school and after entering the beauty contest, she could no longer attend the school and become a teacher and she ended up getting married. So it shows also the parameters of the regime at the time. What about how the role of women changed within the family? How was that reflected in family photos and vernacular photography? There is a family portrait that I came across and that's been haunting me for a very long time. This image includes four generations

with the elderly couple sitting in the middle and the elderly woman in the middle wearing a coat, manto, and a black veil showing the level of modernization in her generation, and with the younger generation now having transitioned fully into kind of the fashion from the 1920s. Still wearing the bonnet hat, which was called the Rusbaşı at the time, And also this image, this photograph, which is a rare example of an intergenerational family portrait, it shows us that the modernization happened simultaneously across generations, but to varying degrees. With men, the transition is less visible, I would argue, but we still see also different markers. For instance, facial hair is a marker. The hat is a marker, of course, from fez to the hat, but also the mustache styles from the Ottoman mustache to a more clean-shaped representation,

all of which go in parallel to the fashion trends of the time. So they're very much connected to what was happening outside Turkey in the 1920s and 30s. So I think even though we're looking at the specific case of the making of the modern Turkish nation-state. It's also important to realize that photographic production of the 20s in Turkey is very much connected to a global photographic production that was happening. I don't want to lose my heart. I'm burning, I'm burning like a fire.

Coming back to this image, this photograph, looking at the Ottoman logo at the back and also in front at the bottom, it turns out that this picture was taken in the Hamza Rustam studio in Izmir which is still functional today almost 100 years later Hamza Rustam was born in Crete and he was he is considered one of the first Muslim photographers of the Ottoman Empire and consequently of modern Turkey, working with Bahá'u'lláh ibn Rahmizade Bediz, first in Crete. And when Bahá'u'lláh ibn Rahmizade left for Turkey in 1909, he kept the studio for a while and following the population exchange, Hamza Rüstem and his family moved to Izmir, opening a studio with the equipment they brought from Crete in 1925.

And being from Izmir myself, I ended up interviewing the grandson, Mert Rüstem, about his family legacy and the studio, the Hamza Rüstem Studio, emerged as a leading photo studio throughout the 20s and 30s, especially after the great fire of Smyrna in 1922. And following the war, of course, the demographics of the city changed completely, which included the disappearance of almost all of the photo studios that were owned by non-Muslim communities at the time. So Hamza Rüstem really single-handedly documented the middle classes of a newly made modern Republican Turkish city, but also photographing Izmir itself

and kind of producing postcards of the city. So you mentioned that Rahab Zarostam was specifically catering to the needs of the middle class. Can you elaborate more on the classed aspect of vernacular photography in 20s and 30s? Nowadays we associate the idea of the modern Turkish citizen with an image that is distinctly classed and gendered and this is one of the key conclusions of this research to identify the class nature of a certain image that the Kemalist regime was pushing for. And what we see through this bulk of photographic production is that a lot of the middle class citizens of the time actively participated in the making of the aesthetics of modern Turkish citizenship. So the negotiations were happening on both ends as the Kemalist regime

was really invested in creating this modern secular westernized image for the newly minted Turkish citizens, the citizens themselves were conforming and adhering to to a great extent. And this is not necessarily because of the authoritarian nature of the regime. There are also a lot of practicalities. For instance, the state being the main employer at the time and integrating and adopting a certain image, a certain identity, meant more employment opportunities, for instance. Or there's also class aspirations for citizens to again create a middle-class identity

for themselves to fit in. There is another factor to consider, which is Turkey emerged out of a decade-long war, war period, starting with the Balkan Wars, followed by the First World War, and then later the War of Independence. So that's really a long period of war that left Turkey impoverished, and with a very, very big demographic change, where a lot of the non-muslim communities of the ottoman empire were already gone by the 20s and with the population exchange especially population of modern turkey was also being remade and the people who arrived're also told now there's a new identity to assume, to fit in. How did this decade of wars affect the making of the modern Turkish man?

Turkey is often defined as a military nation, but military being closed off to women, military nation becomes a male nation. So this is another aspect we can discern through vernacular photographs. As an example, I can give soldier portraits, given the importance of military service and the compulsory nature of the military service, soldier portraits emerge as a distinct category and actually the image of the joyful soldier in a lot of the pictures we see soldiers or military school students smiling kind of towards the future because being a soldier is such a desirable role in the society? Who were these photographs produced for? So who are these

images for? This is of course a challenging question in the sense that these images are not for us it's not for our gaze and we study them as visual material to understand the time period but the family portraits of the time were really made for the families for a very small number of people but arguably still made in this semi-private semi-public sphere of the studio with the understanding that the audience for these images could be extended to relatives or friends so they did have a bit of a public nature as well but oftentimes they were also used in lieu of letters, for instance. They were circulated in multiple ways. For instance, again, soldiers sending their postcard prints to families, students, you know, graduation portraits, but also individual studio portraits were used as tokens of self-promotion. And in a case in the book, there is a set of photographs all sent to a man named Shukribe.

And these pictures were dated 1927. So a lot of the images were taken sometime between February and March 1927. And they kind of have this big appreciation and love for Shukri Bey. But they're all men of a kind of like a similar age. And it looks like a lot of these men went to the same studio to have a similar portrait of themselves taken. men went to the same studio to have a similar portrait of themselves taken and they write in a very elaborate ottoman how grateful they are to shukrubay for his friendship and if he could accept the lifeless body or lifeless shadow as photographs were referred to at the time as a kind of ephemeral souvenir of the days they spent in Ankara. And turns out it's kind of like a puzzle with, you know, each inscription would be a part of

the puzzle. And when you put together the puzzle, it turns out that these men were employers, men were employers muavin as in deputy director of the zirat bank at the time and they were all attending a training school in ankara for a few months organized for the zirat bank employers so they were colleagues but also classmates and shukrubay was one of the classmates, one of the Muavins who attended this training school. And it must have been in the archive of Shukrubay that these photographs were kept. And how did they end up in a sahaf, in a second book cellar in Izmir? I don't know, but this indicates that photographs were circulated not only in familial networks at the time, but also among colleagues. And also the inscriptions point to the class nature of the way photography was used. How does the elaborate language pertain to class? The elaborate Ottoman language was still very much reserved to a small elite because in 1927 the literacy rate was around 8%

and that's in urban areas on average. In some cities it was even less, in eastern provinces down to 1%. So given the literacy rates, writing and reading in the Ottoman language already is an indicator for class. What was the impact of the Kemalist language reform and Latinization of the alphabet on how photographic inscriptions were written? What we see after the alphabet change and the language reform, it's not only kind of the imposition of the Latin alphabet, but also this countrywide campaign to increase the literacy levels. countrywide campaign to increase the literacy levels and as a result the photographic inscriptions become quite simpler and more spartan again in relation to the way photography came to be perceived as a necessity so this is also very interesting to observe how photography was interpreted and the photographic inscriptions changed shape as modern Turkey continued to impose the Kemalist reforms in the 1920s and 30s. We see the Ottoman language throughout the 30s and 40s,

and that's also interesting because it shows that the Ottoman language was allowed to a certain degree by the regime, and it wasn't seen as a threat, unlike, for instance, the fez, wearing the fez, which was banned through legislative measures. So it's also interesting to observe what the Kemalist regime interpreted the threat as versus to what degree the regime could allow some of the earlier traditions or habits of people. So was vernacular photography completely the domain of the middle class in the studio photographs in the cities?

Or were there other ways for the working classes and the rural population to participate in the production of vernacular photography? Unlike a lot of the western countries where amateur snapshot photography was already becoming quite popular in a large segment of the society, the penetration of amateur cameras took much longer in Turkey and it was reserved mostly for upper middle classes at the time. So to fill that vacuum, aluminum photography, itinerant photography played a large role documenting both the daily life leisurely activities in urban spaces but also in the countryside so a lot of the representations that we see outside the studio are thanks to the diversification that Alaminut photography enabled across Turkey. And 1930s is also a time period where Alaminut

photography really flourished. This type of photographic production has a quite an attractive kind of aesthetic feel, kind of faded and in rare cases we are also able to see the negative and the positive print of the same image because Alaminut or camera box photography was first produced as a negative print, which was re-photographed to make a positive. Since Alaminut photography was not seen as a valuable body of work, a lot of the negatives were thrown away, but we do see some of the negative prints today and some collectors are actually particularly keen to collect those.

They're called Arap, as in Arab, with the connotation of the Arab associated with black that led to the this terminology and it's still a term that's used in photography today and alaminut photographers were not well trained because of the simple setup mostly men although i did come across a picture of a woman Alaminut photographer in one of the newspapers at the time and it's also interesting because again Alaminut photography negotiated the different types of self-representations between the public and the private Alaminut photographers traveling across Turkey with either painted backdrops or embroidered backdrops or just plain curtains taking pictures of the people

in their surroundings. One could argue that in some cases they were more candid than the pictures in a studio but at at the same time, perhaps the social pressure was greater since a lot of the production was happening on the street. So we kind of work with different layers of photographic production. And Al-Aminyat photography offers us different types of representations from low-income classes or more conservative societies that did not have access to studio photography or they were more hesitant to go to studios. So the question which I think comes up here is who is actually doing the representing like is this a performance done by the studio photographers or element photographers or is it a self-representation of people who are being photographed or is it a more complicated picture I think the photographers

did have a lot of agency and with some of the studio photographers when we look at their production we see certain patterns and I think they they did take pride in some of their signature poses that they imposed on the on the sitters but we could also see agency of the sitters as well to a certain degree so I think there was a kind of like a two-way negotiation, but I think oftentimes the photographer did have a say on the way they composed the images. For instance, symmetry was a primary kind of concern. So in a lot of the family portraits, you do see, for instance, kind of the older generation seated in the middle as a sign of the family portraits you do see for instance kind of the older generation seated in the middle as a sign of respect but also the fact that the women are in the middle is not necessarily a marker for the role of women in society but really it was maybe better aesthetically or for symmetrical reasons so we see a lot of that for sure and much later we

have for instance photo gerçek which was dubbed the world's first selfie studio it was an invention by a turkish inventor and you could actually have your own picture taken with a button. So in that case, yes, the sitters have had their agency. But I think at the time, I want to ask, who is the woman on the cover of the book? And what does her photo or her photos show us about vernacular photography in early Republican era? The woman on the cover is Nebat Kara karaorman nebahat hamid karaorman there are six portraits of nebahat karaorman that i had purchased and stumbled upon again when

looking at the archive doing doing the research and it was actually when we were cataloging these images, we started thinking about the question as to how to archive these images, how to describe these images, a woman, a man, and why do we actually use these categories to catalog images, family photographs. And out of that came the question of conformity and subversion and how we can read gender, we can interpret gender in vernacular photography. Then a seventh image came into the picture. It was part of the archive but misplaced somewhere. And the seventh photograph made it clear that she was a teacher at Çapa Teacher School in Istanbul. She was a leading teacher at the time, part of the feminist movement.

We know some of the other names, for instance Hayli de Ed Edip but she was part of that group just less well known but also she had a conference paper on sex education she has interviews on child marriage for instance and so she did think about gender and gender roles. So this is a very complicated public figure in a way, but also a production of the Kemalist regime itself. So I thought this is a very good example as to how we should also be careful not to over-read or over-interpret certain things in vernacular photographs. It's very easy to get excited about a certain type of reading. Kıvam çiçeksiz olmaz Gönlüm sesensiz olmaz Saklanma sımsız sıca

Bir güzelim de buca Durmaz ateşim oca Gönlüm sesensiz olmaz