Tina Barouti on the Arab Imago: a Social History of Portrait

Stephen Sheehi. The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860-1910. Princeton University Press, 2016. pages cm $45.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-691-15132-8. Reviewed by Tina Barouti (Boston University) Published on H-AMCA (January, 2017) Commissioned by Jessica Gerschultz (University of Kansas) The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait poles: the analytical and practical history of indi‐ Photography, 1860-1910, the title of Stephen Shee‐ genista photography in the Ottoman Arab world hi’s crucial book, urgently shifts the center of and an abstruse theorization of the multifold lev‐ scholarship to consider the indigenista photo‐ els of photography as a “social and ideological act” graph, particularly its production, discourse, per‐ (p. xxxvii). formance, exchange, circulation, and display in Sheehi’s The Arab Imago not only provides the Ottoman Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine from 1860 field of Middle Eastern photography with an intro‐ to 1910, thereby reversing historical narratives of duction to unexplored photographers, photograph‐ Middle Eastern photography, which have focused ic practitioners, texts on photography, and photog‐ on the production and perspective of the colonisa‐ raphy studios, but also sets forth a new methodolo‐ teurs, largely overlooking the contribution of na‐ gy wherein an analysis of the manifest and latent tive photographers (p. xxii). Sheehi borrows the content of indigenista photography can elucidate term “indigenista” from Latin American anthro‐ the “nature of photography” in the Ottoman Arab pologist Deborah Poole, whose examination of world. He uncovers its particular history, ideology, photography in turn-of-the-century Peru and the and social relations, which have been overshad‐ country’s processes of embourgeoisement parallels owed by those of the colonisateurs. Although the that of the Ottoman world, showing that the rise in art-historical canon has a long way to go before portrait photography as a social practice and a the focus is shifted from the foreign to the native growing middle class could be found in diverse re‐ photographer, Sheehi’s text is a valuable contribu‐ gions of the global South. The time frame of Shee‐ tion to the nascent stage of this developing schol‐ hi’s text is significant in that it marks the rise of the arship.[1] Overall, The Arab Imago succeeds in its Tanzimat, a series of reforms and processes of attempt to “deprovincialize” the history of Eastern modernization in the Ottoman Empire, and nah‐ photography, specifically of the Ottoman Arab dah, or renaissance, in the Arab world in 1860 and world, from European master narratives. Sheehi the decline of the Osmanlilik project in 1910. Com‐ explains that in a variety of disciplines Middle posed of two parts, “Histories and Practice” and Eastern and European modernity are incorrectly “Case Studies and Theory,” The Arab Imago con‐ enmeshed. Although the author acknowledges that tains eight chapters that are oriented around two H-Net Reviews Ottoman reformers looked to Western models for tions; photography is an afterimage rather than a inspiration, they were both “self-aware” and had producer of political, economic, class, national, specific “ideological intent” (p. 6). It can be said, and subject formation transformations; and the therefore, that Ottoman modernity is autonomous portrait as a material object operates on both the from that of the West and that Ottoman photogra‐ manifest and the latent level (p. xxiii). Additionally, phy is purely an Ottoman phenomenon. the The Arab Imago can be reduced to the follow‐ In his introduction, Sheehi addresses the co‐ ing two themes or functions of photography: the nundrum of Arab photography by tackling a ques‐ portrait as ideological tool and the portrait as sta‐ tion commonly posed in art-historical and curato‐ bilizer of identity. The manifest is concerned with rial discourse: “How is Arab photography really the formal qualities of the photograph; it is the sur‐ different?”[2] According to Sheehi, if the so-called face of the image that contains visual cues or an Eastern image is formally different from the index of recognizable physical and ideological “Western master-image,” it runs the risk of perpet‐ signs that “enact” the ideas of nahdah ideology, uating unflattering narratives of “Otherness,” thereby allowing the photograph to also be a per‐ which maintain the traditional power dichotomy formance of sorts. The manifest also stabilizes and of “dominant West” vis-à-vis “submissive East.” If homogenizes its subjects, satisfying the Os‐ the Eastern image is formally similar, it is reduced manlilik ideology of inclusion and universality to a mimicry of the Western image. Both cases sus‐ amongst all citizens of the Ottoman Empire. Inter‐ tain reductive East-West binaries and strip the estingly, as in the case of the portrait of governor Eastern image and its producers of any agency. Midhat Pasha, who had a reputation for suppress‐ The Arab Imago aims to solve this dilemma by ing revolts in Iraq, the manifest level can be vio‐ stressing the role of the indigenous photographer lent by “re-working” or erasing the latent content as not a passive consumer but an innovator of of an image (fig. 62, pp. 158-160). In the case of the photographic technology. Although many Arab Iraqi governor, his portrait conceals the “violence portraits reproduce the “genetic patterns” found in of modernity and the reform project” (p. 159). Be‐ the formalism of European images, they are im‐ cause The Arab Imago is a social history of portrait bued with Osmanlilik and nahdah ideology.[3] The photography in the Ottoman Arab world, Sheehi is formal similarities are not direct imitations nor more concerned with the latent level of the photo‐ are they the result of a lack of knowledge and skill graph, which contains hidden histories of how the on the part of the indigenista photographer; manifest content became naturalized, how the sig‐ rather, the visual parallels are the result of the na‐ nification system became intelligible, and how the ture of the medium. Photography, according to imago of the portrait became recognizable and de‐ Sheehi, was an “organically native social practice” sirable. in the Ottoman Arab world of the mid-nineteenth The theme of photography as ideological tool century to the early twentieth century (p. 32). The is apparent in Sheehi’s discussion of the Ottoman images Sheehi presents in The Arab Imago are sultans, particularly Sultan Abdülaziz, who used loaded with ideological meaning particular to the photography as a way to contain and regulate Ottoman Arab world during a period of reform modernizing projects. Photography had the ability and modernization. to “imprint” the “optical unconscious” of Os‐ Sheehi cites three principles that make up the manlilik ideology and reproduced a particular nature of photography in the late Ottoman Arab “perspective”—through genetic patterns, or the world, which he repeats consistently throughout manifest level—of the photograph, that reflected the text: all photography expresses social rela‐ the Ottoman Empire’s new efforts of reorganiza‐ tion, reform, and modernization. Sheehi’s second 2 H-Net Reviews chapter, “The Arab Imago: Jurji Saboungi and the allowed Ottoman citizens, whether Armenian, Nahdah Image-Screen,” provides examples of Greek, or Arab, to appear formally alike, thereby these genetic patterns and explores how photogra‐ satisfying the Osmanlilik ideological goals and re‐ phy “interpellated” Osmanlilik modernity as Arab sulting in a form of “ethnic erasure.” Sartorial subjectivity during the nineteenth-century “Arab codes, however, can locate a photograph’s sitter Renaissance” (p. 28). Using an undated image of within a particular locale. For example, in a carte Shaykh Effendi al-Khuri and one of an anonymous de visite image of a young couple taken by sitter taken by the photographer Saboungi, Sheehi Saboungi and Krikorian around 1880-90, the garb identifies orthodox visual iconography, such as a worn by the sitters locates them in Ottoman Syria forward gaze, which stabilizes the body and pos‐ (fig. 32). According to Sheehi, they project their ture; a slightly rigid stance; and an arm resting on “own version of cosmopolitan Arab modernity” a rococo chair (fig. 18, p. 34). These two images ex‐ (p. 63). Moving away from the book’s general con‐ ude virtues associated with the nahdah-Tanzimat centration on the middle- and upper-class popula‐ ideology, such as perseverance, temperance, ambi‐ tion, Sheehi states that the carte de visite, despite tion, knowledge, and patriotism. The iconography being uneven, was a mass social practice. Aside seen in these two images and others used in Shee‐ from the peasant class, Ottoman Arab “cartoma‐ hi’s text, which are often strategically banal, in‐ nia” meant that every private citizen may have significant, and anonymous photographs, repre‐ had at least one image taken in a lifetime (p. 60). A sents a visual standard for the “new men and deeper examination of these non-efendiyah-class women” and is repeated time after time. Questions carte de visits would be a compelling future of how the images of “new women” differed from project. those of “new men” on the manifest level need fur‐ In addition to exploring photography as a rep‐ ther fleshing out in future scholarship. The lack of resentative of ideology and a flattener of Ottoman identification of the anonymous sitter document‐ identity, Sheehi also pays particular attention to ed by Saboungi, despite his anonymity, has the the discourse surrounding photography. In the same ideological effect as an image of the nah‐ chapter “Writing Photography: Technomateriality dah’s most prolific writer, Jurji Zaidan, taken by an and the Verum Factum,” Sheehi reviews public unknown photographer (fig. 19, p. 35). An image of writing of al-nahdah al-‘arabiyah on photography a prestigious writer is placed beside that of a com‐ in the Arab press. Unlike in Europe, photographic mon, unidentified man.

Load more