From Sitters to Photographers: Women Photography from the Qajar Era through the 1930s (authors:...

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From Sitters to Photographers:Women in Photography from the

Qajar Era to the 1930s

Khadijeh Mohammadi Nameghi and Carmen Pe�rezGonzalez

Royal patronage enabled photography to enter Iran, but it spread through thecountry without much difficulty, cost being the main impediment. Women faceda particular obstacle, however, for religious prescriptions prevented their sitting forphotographers other than close kin. A newspaper advertisement of 1877 indicatesthat women were not allowed in photography studios. King N�aser-ed-Din ShahQajar (r. 1848–98) ignored such restrictions and photographed his wives. Not onlydid he himself photograph, but he also trained his servants and harem eunuchs to doso. The elite followed him in embracing the new invention, but they were reluctantto allow their wives to be photographed in public studios. Some set up householddarkrooms, and thus women were photographed in a number of these families. Thisarticle examines how women were portrayed in photographs during the Qajar era byEuropean male and female photographers and by Iranian female and male photo-graphers; it also examines dossiers relating to the photography of women from themid-1850s through the 1930s.

Keywords: nineteenth-century female portrait photography (1860–1930), women

sitters in portrait photography, women photographers, W. Orde�n (ca. 1885–92), The

Citroen Mission (1931–32)

We begin by introducing western photographers who photographed women in Iran

during the Qajar Era, introducing them chronologically. The first female photogra-

pher was active in the early 1880s, whereas the first European male photographer was

active as early as 1858. This gentleman managed to take a number of portrait

photographs of Iranian women. Due to the cultural and social restrictions of

Iranian society in the nineteenth century, foreign male photographers did not have

easy access to Iranian women. In contrast, foreign female photographers could work

without hindrance and were welcomed by Iranian women. In the second part of our

article, we explore how Iranian photographers approached the topic of photograph-

ing women. Questions include: what kind of images of Iranian women did they

produce? Is there a difference between work produced by female and male photo-

graphers, or western versus Iranian photographers? Therefore, gender, nationality,

and status (travellers, occasional photographers and resident photographers) will be

the parameters examined in this paper.

The photographers who took pictures of Iranian women sitters are shown in

Table 1, providing a framework whereby a comparative reading of their activity can

be carried out within the timespan considered for this article. We have considered

Email for correspondence:

[email protected]

History of Photography, Volume 37, Number 1, February 2013

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2012.718142

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

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mailto:[email protected]

only photographers whose corpus of photographs of Iran includes a significant

percentage of Iranian women.

European Male Travellers and Photographers in Iran

Western nineteenth-century travellers to Iran came from diverse cultural back-

grounds. They can be classified according to the motivation that led them to travel:

diplomats and travellers on political ormilitary missions; travellers on archaeological

missions; tourists. In comparison with the Ottoman lands and the Far East, Persia

attracted fewer travellers. This can be inferred from the principal guidebooks of the

period, those issued by the British publisher John Murray and the German Karl

Baedeker. By 1895, whenMurray’s first handbook included Persia (as a short chapter

within the whole guidebook and only as a crossing route from Turkey, Russia or to

India),1 his guidebook to Egypt was already in its eighth edition, that to Japan was in

its fifth edition and that to India was in its third. In Murray’s 1854 guidebook to

Turkey we find just two pages referring to Persia and those in route number sixty

from Erzurum to Persia.2 As for Baedeker, the first guidebook with a chapter on

Persia was Konstantinopel und das Westliche Kleinasien printed in 1908, when the

Egypt guidebook in German was already in its third edition.3

Some early travellers to Iran published their studies and memoirs as books, as

happened everywhere else around the world. Among these are the memoirs of the

Russian artist Prince Alexis Soltykoff (born 1806), who visited N�aser-ed-Din Mirz�a

Table 1. Photographers of Women in Iran

ca. 1860–1930.

1 – Sir Charles Wilson, A Handbook for

Travellers in Asia Minor, Transcaucasia,

Persia, etc, London: John Murray 1895.

2 – The author outlined a route from Tabriz

to Tehran and an alternative one, shorter and

more picturesque, from Sultaniah to Kazvin.

See John Murray, Handbook for Travellers to

Turkey, describing Constantinople, European

Turkey, Asia Minor, Armenia, and

Mesopotamia, London: John Murray 1854,

270–1. For a list of Murray’s handbooks, see

William Brian Collins Lister, A Bibliography

of Murray’s Handbooks for Travellers and

Biographies of Authors, Editors, Revisers and

Principal Contributors, intro. John R

Gretton, Dereham: Dereham Books 1993.

3 – G. Ebers, Agypten: Erster Teil, 1st edn,

Leipzig: Karl Baedeker Publisher 1877; and

Egypt First Part: Low Egypt, 1st edn, Leipzig:

Karl Baedeker Publisher 1878. For a full list

of Baedeker’s guidebooks, see Peter

Baumgarten, Baedeker, ein Name wird zur

Weltmarke, Ostfildern: Karl Baedeker Verlag

1998.

49

Women in Photography from the Qajar Era to the 1930s

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in Tabriz in 1838,4 and the painter Colonel F. Colombari, who served in the Iranian

military as an advisor from 1833 until 1848.5 Both are examples of pictorial trave-

logues that were published before the invention of the photography. In Soltykoff’s

travelogue, Voyage en Perse, we find only a few drawings of Iranian women. Among

those, the most interesting one, Femmes Persanes, depicts three young Iranian

women entertaining a number of men (figure 1). Soltykoff’s comment regarding

Iranian women accompanies this drawing:

But women? What grace in their bold walk, when the delicate flooring cracksunder their feet dyed with henna. Their waist is curved and well maintained intheir tied leotard that contrasts with their trousers, wider than a skirt! Theirabundant ebony hair frames their charming face and falls on their tanned breast,visible through their indiscrete gauze! Their words as sweet as honey come outof their delicious mouth! Because Persian is the most attractive language inthe world, nowhere else do we see fresher lips and teeth. But if we want toimagine the charms of these enchantresses, it is ‘Arabian Nights’ that should beconsulted.6

Since access to women’s quarters was restricted to close kin, these drawings and

passages, in line with the tradition of Orientalist painters and writers, were clearly

products of male imagination. However, they are similar aesthetically and icono-

graphically to some photographs taken by European travellers that were later printed

in their travelogues. An interesting early travelogue written by a woman traveller,

published in 1856 with the title Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, constitutes a

rich account of the daily life of Iranian women at the end of the 1840s.7 Mary

Leonora Woulfe Sheil (born 1825) was the wife of the Knight General and

Diplomat Sir Justin Sheil (1803–71). They travelled through Iran during August

1849. A few anonymous drawings appear in her travelogue. Several male travellers

wrote travelogues about their experiences in Iran. They used engravings from

photographs or, later, photographs to illustrate their texts. However, due to social

and cultural gender restrictions, it was extremely difficult for foreign photographers

to photograph women, for they were essentially invisible to them.

As early as 1858 the French photographer Frances Carlhian (1818–70) was

appointed by the Persian court to teach photography, and was instrumental in the

propagation of the wet collodion method in Iran. According to recent research

following the introduction of the Brongiart Album, one finds pictures of women

bearing the insignia of Carhlian.8 Consequently, he can be considered the first

European to have photographed Iranian women.9 These pictures are in line with

European stereotypes of Oriental women: smoking a water-pipe as an archetypical

example of the main entertainment of women in their private quarters. The corpus

Figure 1. Alexander Soltykoff, Femmes

Persanes, ca. 1838, plate 11. From Prince

Alexis Soltykoff, Voyage en Perse, Paris:

Victor Lecou, Libraire-e�diteur 1851.

4 – Prince Alexis Soltykoff, Voyage en Perse,

Paris: Victor Lecou, Libraire-e�diteur 1851.

5 – For information on Colombari, see

Lynne Thornton, Images de Perse. Le voyage

du Colonel Colombari a la cour du chah de

Perse de 1833 a 1848, Paris: Soustiel 1981;

and Lynne Thornton, Les orientalistes.

Peintres voyageurs. 1828–1908, Courbevoi,

Paris: ACR Edition Internationale 1983.

6 – Soltykoff, Voyage en Perse, 69: ‘Mais les

femmes? Quelle grace dans leur de�marche

cavalie�re, lorsque le frele plancher craque sousleurs pieds teints de henne�. Que leur taille est

cambree� et bien prise dans leurs justaucorps si

serre�s, contrastant avec leur pantaloon, plus

ample qu’une jupe! Quelle masse de cheveux

d’e�bene encadre leur charmant visage, et

tombe sur leur sein basane� que recouvre mal

une gaze indiscrete! Quelles paroles de miel

sortent de leur bouche de�licieuse! Car la lange

persane est la plus se�duisante du monde, et

nulle part on ne voit des levres et des dents plus

fraiches. Mais si l’on veut bien se figurer les

charmes de ces enchanteresses, ce sont les ‘Mille

et une Nuits’ qu’il faut consulter. Les vers qui

s’y trouvent intercale�s en grand nombre dans

les re�cits, de�peignent avec une naivite�frappante les appas des Orientales’.

7 – Mary Leonora Woulfe Sheil, Glimpses of

Life and Manners in Persia, London: John

Murray 1856.

8 – This album, which was discovered by

Corien Vuurman, is preserved in the

Museum Guimet of Asian Arts, Paris, Victor

Brongniart Archives Photographiques,

Album Perse AP 11152.

9 – See further Reza Sheikh, ‘Souvenir

Album’, Aksnameh, 15 (2004), 9–23; and

Francesca Bonnetti and Alberto Prandi, La

Persia Qajar. Fotografi italiani in Iran

1848–1864, Rome: Peliti Associati 2010,

175–8.

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Khadijeh Mohammadi Nameghi and Carmen Perez Gonzalez

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left by Carlhian of female portraits is far less significant in numbers than those of later

photographers. There were, indeed, some travellers and photographers active in Iran

for longer periods of time or whose work was more representative in numbers and

that deserve analysis for the topic discussed here, such as the German telegraph

engineer Ernst Holtzer (1835–1911) and the Georgian professional photographer

Antoin Sevruguin (1830–1933).

Holtzer married an Iranian Armenian and for over thirty years lived in Jolfa –

the Armenian district of the city of Isfahan. He began photographing in the early

1870s and managed to take many pictures of Armenian women, amassing a corpus

that constitutes a rich legacy of the costumes and material culture of this minority.

During his three decades in Isfahan he witnessed changing times and recorded the

rich ethnic variety of that city and surrounding areas. Holtzer approached his

subjects from a visual documentary perspective, suppressing their individuality in

the service of a systematic sociological and anthropological survey. This approach is

corroborated by his use of captions stressing the ethnic, working or class background

of the sitters. He avoided names and personal details, while providing supplementary

information about their ways of life. He also covered festivities and religious cere-

monies. He earmarked part of his courtyard as a photographic studio and took

photographs of local games, food and clothing of women.10

In his biography, Holtzer has written that the most senior clergyman of Isfahan

would not permit him to take photographs of female musicians and dancers.

Religious restrictions and the difficulty of operating early cameras are two of the

reasons that encouraged him to stage photographs within his studio with a mise en

scene of his own choice.11

Sevruguin began his professional career in Iran ca. 1875. He too was active in the

production of images of Iranian women. Postcards of women from the Middle East

and North Africa were produced for European consumption. This production took

place mainly in the studios of foreign photographers situated in Algeria, Egypt and

Ottoman Turkey. The photographs produced in such studios depicted semi-naked

women and were replete with western preconceptions of Eastern women and of

harem life.12 The situation in Iran was very different. Neither the amount of staged

photographs produced in Iranian studios, nor the number of photographers

engaged in the business compared with the massive production of those images in

North Africa. From an aesthetic standpoint, Sevruguin’s work was remarkable in his

pictorialist treatment of images and in his masterly use of light. Furthermore, the

number of photographs taken in the course of his thirty-year career reveals impress-

ive variety. His studio was situated in the stylish ¢Al�a-od-Dowle street in Tehran

(now known as Ferdowsi Street), a well-known place for foreigners who travelled to

Iran.13 Towards the end of the Qajar dynasty, when restrictions on photographing

women were not so strictly enforced, women from aristocratic and wealthy families

would go to his studio. Many of these photographs can be found in family albums.14

Sevruguin produced a significant amount of photographs of women, both the

anthropological image and staged Orientalist, including a few portrait photographs

of naked women that can be found in the Sevruguin Collection at the Museum of

Ethnology in Leiden. We will see that many of his photographs were used, without

giving credit to him, by scholars and sporadic travellers to Iran in their

travelogues.15

W. Orde�n (most often misspelled as M. Hordet) is one of the most elusive

photographers active in Central Asia at the end of the nineteenth century. His work,

produced in Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand, has been published in several

books, but what was not known is that he also travelled through Iran at the end of

the nineteenth century and that he took many photographs of landscapes, architec-

ture and people.16 Almost nothing is known of Orde�n, except that he travelled in

Central Asia between 1885 and 1892.17 His prints bear captions written in Russian

and sometimes additionally in French, but his name is always signed using the

Cyrillic alphabet.

10 – See also Jennifer Scarce, ‘Isfahan in

Camera: Nineteenth-century Persia through

the Photographs of Ernst Hoeltzer’, Art

and Archeology Research Papers, 6

(April 1976),1–23; Parisa Damandan,

Thousand Sights of Life. Photographs of Ernst

Hoeltzer from Naser al-Din Shah’s age,

Tehran: Iranian Cultural Heritage

Organization & Documentation Centre

2004; and Parisa Damandan, Portrait

Photographs from Isfahan, Faces in

Transition, London: Ali-Saqi books 2004.

11 –Mohammed Assemi (comp. and trans.),

Ir�an dar yeksad s�al pish [Iran 113 years ago],

Tehran: Markaz-e mardom shenasi-ye

vez�arat-e farhang va honar 1976, 49; and

Damandan, Thousand Sights of Life.

12 – For a study on this topic made using

postcards produced in Algeria in the

nineteenth century, see Malek Alloula, The

Colonial Harem, Minneapolis and London:

University of Minnesota Press 1986.

13 – Corien Vuurman and TheoM.Martens,

‘Early Photography in Iran and the Career of

Antoin Sevruguin’, in Sevruguin and the

Persian Image: Photographs of Iran,

1870–1930, ed. F. M. Bohrer, Washington,

DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian

Institution and University of Washington

Press 1999, 24.

14 – See also Sevruguin’s Iran/ Ir�an az neg�ah–

e Sevruguin, ed. A. F. Barjesteh vanWaalwijk

van Doorn and Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood,

Tehran & Rotterdam: Barjesteh & Zamaan

Publications 1999; Carmen Pe�rez Gonzalez,

‘The Persian Tonsure’, in Omslag, 2 (2007),

12; Corien Vuurman, Carmen Pe�rez

Gonzalez and Reza Sheikh, ‘Eyes on Persia’,

in Qajar Studies, Vol. VIII, Rotterdam: IQSA

Publications 2008, 43–77. For a selection of

Sevruguin’s photographs online, see the

Freer and Sackler Gallery, Washington DC,

http://www.asia.si.edu/archives/

finding_aids/sevruguin.html.

15 – For a list of the travelogues, see Reza

Sheikh, ‘Sevruguin va tasvirs�azi az ir�an dar

av�akher-e qarn-e nuzdahom va av�ayel-eqarn-e bistom’, Aksnameh, 7 (2001),

endnotes.

16 – Vitaly Naumkin, Caught in Time. Great

Photographic Archives. Samarkanda,

Reading: Garnet Publishing Limited 1992;

Vitaly Naumkin, Caught in Time. Great

Photographic Archives. Khiva, Reading:

Garnet Publishing Limited 1993; Ergun

Cagatay, Once Upon a Time in Central Asia,

Istanbul: Tetrafon 1996; and Kate Fitz

Gibbon, ‘Emirate and Empire: Photography

in Central Asia 1858–1917’, Social Science

Research Network (online resource),

September 2009, 1–34. See http://papers.

ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?

abstract_id=1480082

17 – Naumkin, Samarkanda, 10. Naumkin

does not provide primary sources to support

his statement.

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http://www.asia.si.edu/archives/finding_aids/sevruguin.html

http://www.asia.si.edu/archives/finding_aids/sevruguin.html

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1480082



The present authors recently unearthed in theMuseum of Ethnology in Vienna a

hitherto unknown collection photographs attributed to W. Orde�n. This contains

seven hundred photographs from the Kh�anates Khiva, Samarkand and Khokand, in

Central Asia, and from Iran. Linked to the collection are two letters written in

German by the photographer himself and signed ‘W. Orde�n’; in these he offers the

collection to the museum, stating his conditions. Orde�n’s albumen prints measure

approximately 16 · 22 cm and are 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 numbers 1,504 and 1,602, a few are numbered in the 1880s or

2000s, and many more appear between 2,745 and 2,791’.18 The subjects of the

photographs include studio portraits, landscapes, cemeteries, archaeological sites

and street scenery.

Orde�n must have been fond of collages, for there are many in his collection.

Some depict Iranian types: more precisely, there are nine photographs depicting

Iranian women, and seven of those comprise two, three or four photographs; in total

there are twenty-four photographs of women. Having analysed the collection, we can

conclude that Orde�n’s view was anthropological. This is suggested by the care he

displays in arranging the collages of types and the information given for each; by the

repetition of certain subjects/topics, such as the cemeteries and also non-native

communities of people in each city; by the number of art objects and artefacts and

the care taken in arranging the image. It seems that he took considerable effort to give

as much visual information as possible, with the result that his photographs provide

a wealth of information about the material culture of the countries he visited; the

visual information is supplemented by captions that are rich in information.

Portraits of Iranian women by Orde�n, all of them collages, include an image

captioned in Russian, French and German Persian Women in Ballet-costume

(figure 2). This constitutes an archetypical image of Iranian women depicted by

foreign male photographers in the nineteenth century. All the characteristic elements

are there: the odalisque pose; the water-pipe; and the cushion and carpet. But the

interest of this photograph lies in the fact that the photographer has arranged two

different photographs in one image, therefore manipulating further the ‘reality’ that

he had in front of him, as if he wanted to show movement. Another example of this

manipulation is provided by a collage of three photographs containing portraits of

two women and one of a man, which recreates a moment in the Kh�an’s harem

(figure 3). The women wear the typical outfit of that time and both are standing,

whereas the head of the harem is sitting enjoying his water-pipe. The man is clearly

not Iranian: the clothing and head-turban indicate that he was from Khiva or

Bukhara. A third image shows that Orde�n did not only produce stereotypical images

of Iranian women (figure 4). In fact, most of his work is valuable for his documentary

approach, showing an anthropological perspective. In this image, four women have

been depicted, and their portraits have been arranged in a collage and captioned in

Russian, French and German Four Armenian Women from Tabriz and Isfahan,

providing a wealth of information for experts on nineteenth-century local dress.

Other photographers took photographs of Iranian women, but their repertoire

is relatively limited. The Russian Dimitri Ermakov (1845–1916, active 1870s) pro-

duced mostly studio portraits and ethnographical portraits of groups of women.19

Another amateur photographer who took photographs of Iranian women was the

Dutchman Albert Hotz (1855–1930), who took photographs to illustrate his travels

through Iran in the 1890s.20

Scholarly travellers took, bought or commissioned photographs to illustrate

their publications. A number of art historians and archaeologists commissioned

extensive photographic surveys. These include the German photographer,

Iranologist and writer Franz Stolze (1836–1910), who stayed in Iran from 1874 to

1881; the French archaeologist and photographer Jacques Jean Marie de Morgan

(1857–1924), who was in Iran in 1897;21 and the German Friedrich Sarre (1836–

1910), who travelled in Iran and Turkestan in 1897–98 and 1899–1900.22 Owing to

18 – Fitz Gibbon, ‘Emirate and Empire’, 19.

Remarkably, in this collection we found

numbers up to 4,281 (a photograph taken in

Erzurum), much higher than what was

known to date. In particular, the

photographs taken in Iran or depicting

Iranian types go up to number 3,189 (the

lowest negative number being 1,755).

19 – Interestingly, he is the only

photographer active in Iran in the nineteenth

century whose work is mentioned in the

recent Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-century

Photography. Hans Herder, ‘Ermakov,

Dimitri’, in Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-

century Photography, ed. John Hannavy, New

York: Routledge Chapman & Hall 2005,

494–5. See also Hans de Herder, ‘Ermakov as

Photographer and Traveller’, in Journal of the

International Qajar Association, ed.

L. A. Ferydoun Barjesteh van Waalwijk van

Doom et al., Rotterdam/Santa Barbara/

Tehran 2001, 57–62; and Corien

J. M. Vuurman-Achour, ‘Dimitri

Iwanowitsch Ermakov: Photography Across

the Persian Border’, in Journal of the

International Qajar Association, ed.

L. A. Ferydoun Barjesteh van Waalwijk van

Doom et al., Rotterdam/Santa Barbara/

Tehran 2007, 92–107.

20 – See Corien Vuurman and T. H.Martens,

Perzie en Hotz. Beelden uit de fotocollectie

Hotz in de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek,

Leiden: Legatum Warneriarum, Bibliothek

der Rijksuniversiteit 1995; Just Jan Witkam,

‘Albert Hotz and His Photographs of Iran:

An Introduction to the Leiden Collection’, in

Iran and Iranian Studies. Essays in Honor of

Iraj Afshar, ed. Kambiz Eslami, Princeton,

NJ: Zagros, 1998, 276–88; and Corien

Vuurman, Nineteenth-century Persia in the

Photographs of Albert Hotz. Images from the

Hotz Photograph Collection of Leiden

University Library, the Netherlands,

Rotterdam and Gronsveld IQSA 2011.

21 – There are 351 photographs by Morgan

in four albums preserved in the Palace

Golestan Library: Numbers 1397, 1398, 1399,

1400

22 – Friedrich Sarre, Iranische Felsreliefs,

Berlin: E. Wasmuth 1910.

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Figure 2. W. Orde�n, Persian Woman in Ballet-costume, albumen print, ca.

1893. Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, VF-4952.

Figure 3. W. Orde�n, A Persian Harem, albumen print, ca. 1893. Museum of

Ethnology in Vienna, VF-4994.

Figure 4. W. Orde�n, Armenienns de Tabriz et

d’Isfahan, albumen print, ca. 1893. Museum

of Ethnology in Vienna, VF-4983.

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their professions and their travels through villages and rural areas, they produced

several pictures showing women. In the case of Sarre, he only used photographs by

Sevruguin. In the absence of copyright laws in the nineteenth century, Sevruguin is

once again not credited. They concentrated on the landscape, archaeological sites

and daily life of local people living in small villages. Other travelogues are those by

French writer Henry Rene� D’Allemagne (1863–1950) and the Swedish geographer

and explorer Sven Hedin (1865–1952). D’Allemagne’s Du Khorasan au Pays des

Bakhtiaris. Trois mois de voyage en Perse, published in 1911 in four volumes, devotes

a chapter to women, Les femmes persanes, reproducing eighteen uncredited photo-

graphs (single portraits and group portraits), but many of them we have been able to

identify as those of Sevruguin.23 In the rest of his travelogue, he refers repeatedly to

this topic, and we find many photographs of women distributed throughout the

1,400 pages of the book. Hedin’s Zu Land nach Indien, published in Leipzig in two

volumes in 1910, presents 308 images that include his photographs, watercolours

and drawings. Nearly fifteen images depict women, either as single portraits or in

groups. Two of the photographs were probably taken by Sevruguin, since Hedin

gives credit to an Armenian photographer. There are also drawings of Iranian

women.24

The German Orientalist, diplomat and politician Friedrich Rosen (1856–1935)

travelled to Iran in the 1920s and wrote a travelogue entitled Persien in Wort und

Bild published in Leipzig in 1926, which included 165 photographs.25 Nearly ten

images depict women, either as single portraits or in groups, most of them by

Sevruguin.

Another unknown corpus of photographs, produced during the Yellow Cruise,

the third Citroen expedition to Iran (1931–32), has been located recently and

contains a set of photographs taken by the expedition photographer, Maynard

Owen Williams (1888–1963). Williams became correspondent for National

Geographic from 1919 onwards. He was the only National Geographic correspondent

and the only American to take part in this expedition, which was directed by the

Frenchman George-Marie Haardt. On 4 April 1931, Haardt started this expedition,

which would cross from the Mediterranean to the Yellow Sea and would retrace

partly the route that Marco Polo covered 650 years before. Among the 463 gelatin

silver prints that comprise the collection by Williams, 203 are of Iran and forty-three

of those represent women. This corpus deserves further study (figure 5).26 The

images of women can be grouped as single portraits; group portraits; group portraits

of mixed gender; couples; groups of school girls.

Around the same time, in June 1931, the University of Pennsylvania

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology launched its first archaeological

expedition to Iran to excavate the site of Tepe Hissar in north-eastern Iran.

The German archaeologist Erich F. Schmidt (1897–1964) led this project,

documenting it with 2,600 photographs. Several of his photographs of women

have been printed in Ayse Gursan-Salzmann’s Exploring Iran: The Photographs

of Erich F. Schmidt: 1930–1940.27

Female European Travellers and Photographers

Three western women who travelled through Iran during the Qajar Era were the

French archaeologist and journalist Jane Dieulafoy (1851–1916, active 1881–82), the

Englishwoman Isabella Lucy Bishop-Bird (active 1890) and the archaeologist

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (1868–1926, active in Iran 1911). Dieulafoy’s

and Bell’s travels were inspired and conditioned by their interest in archaeological

research, whereas that of Bishop-Bird was motivated by a broad interest in travel.

Jane Dieulafoy married the French archaeologist Marcel Dieulafoy in 1870 and

joined him in the army of the Loire during the Franco-Prussian War. From that

time, she adopted masculine costume and a short haircut in her extensive travels.

As stated by the Barbara Hodgson: ‘She needed a Permission de travestiment Permit

23 – Henry Rene� D’Allemagne, Du

Khorassan au pays des Backhtiaris: trois mois

de voyage en Perse, Vol. 2, Paris: Hachette

1911, 1–36.

24 – Sven Hedin, Zu Land nach Indien,

Leipzig: S. A. Brockhaus 1910.

25 – Friederich Rosen, Persien in Wort und

Bild, Leipzig, Berlin, Wien and Bern: Franz

Schneider Verlag 1926.

26 – We thank Elmar Seibel, director of Ars

Libri in Boston, for facilitating access to his

collection. For references of this work, see

Leah Bendavid-Val, Gilbert M. Grosvenor,

Mark Collins Jenkins and Viola Kiesinger

Wentzel, Odysseys and Photographs. Four

National Geographic Field Men: Maynard

Owen Williams, Luis Marden, Welkmar

Wentzel, Thomas Abercrombie, Focal Point:

National Geographic 2008. For information

about the Citroen mission, see D. B. Bryan

Courtlandt, Das grosse National Geographic

Book. Ein Jahrhundert Abenteur und

Entdeckung, Hamburg: National Geographic

2004.

27 – Ayse Gursan-Salzmann, Exploring Iran.

The Photography of Erich F. Schmidt,

1930–1940, Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology 2007.

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to Cross-Dress (granted by the police in case of health or occupational require-

ments) and indulged in the opportunity to dress comfortably even while in Paris’.28

Hodgson states further, quoting Felicia Gordon and Maire Cross: ‘According to

the London Times, she wore trousers to escort the Shah of Persia through

the Louvre in 1889’.29 She and her husband formed a strange couple and became

a favourite target of journalists and cartoonists. A well-known example of this is

a caricature published in L’Assiette au beure on19 August 1905 and in Jane

Dieaulofoy’s Une Vie d’homme.30

WhenDieulafoy obtained an assignment in Iran, his wife accompanied him. The

couple covered the entire Iranian itinerary on horseback (1881–82), and Jane proved

to be much more than a courageous and devoted companion. As stated by Eve Gran-

Aymeric, she called herself collaborateur deliberately using the masculine form – ‘a

female collaborator’, she said, ‘would have been a great annoyance’.31 One wonders

how her outfit had been received by Iranian men and women. In Etemadol-Saltane’s

(1843–96) memoirs, he wrote that he met her and her husband at the house of N�aser-

ed-Din Shah’s private doctor. He describes her as a learned 35-year-old woman

dressed inmasculine clothes.32 Shemanaged to enter the andarun (the private quarters

Figure 5. Owen Mayland Williams, Family

of an Iranian Gentleman in their Private

Garden and Home Dress, Iran, 1932.

Collection of Azita Bina and Elmar

W. Seibel.

28 – Barbara Hodgson, Dreaming of the East.

Western Women and the Exotic Allure of the

Orient, Vancouver, Toronto, Berkeley:

Greystone Books 2005, 73.

29 – Felicia Gordon and Maire Cross, Early

French Feminisms, 1830–1940: A Passion for

Liberty, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 1996,

n. 226.

30 – Eve et Jean Gran-Aymeric, Jane

Dieulafoy. Une vie d’homme, Paris: Perrin

1990, 157.

31 – Eve Gran-Aymeric, ‘Jane Dieulafoy,

1851–1916’, in Breaking Ground: Pioneering

Women Archaeologists, ed. Getzel M. Cohen

and Martha Sharp Joukowsky. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press 2006, 34–67.

32 – Mohammad Hasan Etemadol-Saltane,

Ruzn�ame-ye Kh�ater�at-e E ¢tem�ad-os-Saltane,

Tehran: Amir Kabir Publication 2000, 80.

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dedicated to women, their children, close kin and husbands) and provided vivid

descriptions of the lives of women of all ranks. Besides the main monuments and

archaeological remains, she photographed and processed on the spot many portraits

of men, women and social groups. All drawings and engravings illustrating her travel

accounts and Marcel Dieulafoy’s publications were made from these photographs.

To our knowledge, Dieulafoy was the first female foreign traveller who success-

fully took photographs of Iranian women. She travelled in Iran between 1881 and

1884. After returning to Europe, she published La Perse, la Chalde�e, la Susiane.33 She

also published a large number of engravings, and her travelogue constitutes the

richest example of Iranian women portrayal in the nineteenth century by a foreign

women photographer: of 336 lithographs, fifty are portraits of women. This remark-

able corpus makes Dieulafoy the most significant European woman photographing

women in the Qajar Era, even if this was not her primary photographic interest.

There is no doubt that women photographers would garner the trust of their

subjects, as we can read in Dieulafoy’s travelogue. In her memoirs, Dieulafoy tells

us repeatedly of the women’s eagerness to be photographed. In an entry from 11

August, she explains how the wife of Kerman province’s governor asked her to take

her portrait through the intervention of a lady servant:

At nightfall, a Muslim servant arrives and asks to speak to me. When Iarrived at the palace, she said, my master asked the name of the twoFarangi(s) (i.e. a colloquial way of saying foreigner in Persian), whosepresence had stopped her walk by the Meyd�an mosque. Discovering thatone of these photographers was a lady, she expressed her intention to haveher portrait taken. The h�akem (i.e. the Kerman’s province governor)refused, based on unfounded reasons, to accept her request: then mymaster decided to use your photographic skills secretly: she will cometomorrow, without maids and dressed as a servant, at the house of thewife of Im�am Jom ¢e, (‘Head of Friday Prayers’) after having sent over theoutfit she wishes to wear on such a great occasion.34

Next to the interest of Iranian women in being portrayed by Dieulafoy, we glean

from her text that she was interested primarily in particular types of women. In an

entry of her journal for 17 October we read:

The chirazien type is elegant; but why is it that the ugliest and oldest womenare the ones who desire most to have their portraits taken? I have found apolite way to satisfy the old admirers of my photographic talent. I introduce anempty frame, I ask my model to pose for three minutes in an unbalancedposition, and I finally declare that the portrait is not successful due to a lackof immobility. I have used this simple and cheap method three timestoday, and I was able, thanks to my stratagem, to photograph the daughterand the daughter-in-law of my guest, and to obtain a glass negative whichsatisfied the governor’s desire, eldest son of Zel-ol-soltan (one of N�aser-ed-Din Shah’s sons).35

Dieulafoy’s preference for portraying young, beautiful women is apparent

throughout her book. An example is the image Zib�a Kh�anom (beautiful

woman) (figure 6), in which a young woman wears the typical dress of that

time with a transparent blouse revealing her breasts. Zib�a Kh�anom was one of

N�aser-ed-Din Shah’s wives and she accompanied him on his first European

tour in 1873. As stated by the Iranian historian Abbas Amanat: ‘She was sent

back from Moscow together with Anis al-Dawle when it became apparent to the

Shah that having tightly veiled royal women in his entourage would cause

discomfort and embarrassment to himself and his royal hosts’.36 In addition

to selecting the type of women she wanted to photograph, Dieulafoy’s critical

remarks concerning the condition of Iranian women reflect the outlook of an

emancipated European woman.

Almost a decade after Dieulafoy, Isabella Bird covered a large part of Iran and

Kurdistan on horseback. Significantly, on a boat up the Tigris in winter 1890 she met

33 – Jane Dieulafoy, La Perse, la Chalde�e, laSusiane, Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie 1887.

The entire book but not all of the images has

been reprinted in two volumes:Une amazone

en Orient and L’Orient sous le voile, Paris:

Phebus 2010 and 2011.

34 – Dieaulafoy, La Perse, 209: ‘A la tombe�e

de la nuit, une servante musulmane se pre�sente

et demande a me parler « En arrivant au

palais, me dit-elle, ma maitrese a demande� le

nom des deux Faranguis dont la presence avait

arrete un moment sa marche devant la

mosque�e Meidan. Apprenant que l’un de ces

photographes e�tait une dame, elle a te�moigne�l’intention de faire faire son portrait. Le hakem

a refuse�, sous de mauvais pretexts, de ser plier a

caprice: alors ma maitresse s’est decide�e a voir

recours en cachette a vos talents: elle se rendra

demain, sans suite et sous les voiles fane�s d’une

servante, chez la femme de l’iman djouma,

apres lui avoir envoye� a l’avance le costume

don’t elle veut se parer dans cette grande

circonstance »’.

35 – Ibid., 437–8. ‘Le type chirazien est

elegant; mais pourquoi faut-il que les femmes

les plus laides et les plus de�cre�pites soient aussi

les plus de�siureses de faire reproduire leurs

traits? J’ai trouve� d’allieurs un moyen poli de

satisfaire les vielles admiratrices de mes talents

de photographe. J’introduis un chassis vide, je

fais poser mon modele pendant trios minutes

dans une attitude mal e�quilibre�e, et finalement

je de�clare que l’e�preuve est manque�, faute

d’une immobilite� suffisante. J’ai utilise� trios

fois aujourd’hui cette formule simple et peu

coutese, et bien m’en a pris, car j’ai pu, grace a

mon stratageme, photographier la fille et la bru

de mon hote et conserver une glace avec

laquelle il m’a e�te� possible de re�pondre au de�sir

du gouverneur, fils aine� de Zelle sultan’.

36 – Taj al-Saltana. Crowning Anguish.

Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem

to Modernity, ed. Abbas Amanat, 1884–1914,

Washington, DC: Mage Publishers 1993, 31.

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Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (1859–1925), another important equestrian traveller.

Unlike Curzon, Bird started travelling late, when she was forty-one years of age. In

1872 she had gone to Hawaii in search of better health and adventure. She was taught

to ride astride by the natives of that island and became addicted to the freedom that

she discovered on horseback. Her Journeys in Persian and Kurdistan. Travels on

Horseback in 1890 detailed her daily experiences and is replete with anecdotes.37

Her travelogue has far fewer images than Dieulafoy’s and only four of fourteen

illustrations are portraits of women; one can therefore surmise that her interests were

less focused on women than those of the French traveller. In contrast, however, her

book is rich in references to Iranian women and their daily life. She refers to meeting

some families in western Iran whose women refused to have their photographs taken.

This contrasts with Dieulafoy’s experience. Bird was made a member of the Royal

Geographical Society after her travels in Iran. A recent article by Luke Gartlan has

introduced important new information from the John Murray Archive, which

includes extensive correspondence between Bird and her publisher as well as her

photographic archive.38

Figure 6. Zib�a Kh�anum, dessin d’Emile

Bayard, ca. 1881. d’Apre�s une photographie

de Jane Dieulofoy (p. 271), No. 130.

37 – Isabella Bird, Journeys in Persia and

Kurdistan. Travels on Horseback in 1890, New

York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons and London: John

Murray 1891; reprinted in 2009 in two

volumes: Volume 1– Journeys in Persia and

Kurdistan. Travels on Horseback in 1890,

Geneva: Long Rider’s Guild Press 2009; and

Volume 2 – Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan

V2: Including Anew York Summer In The

Upper Karun Region And A Visit To The

Nestorian Rayahs (1891), Whitefish, MT:

Kessinger Publishing’s Legacy Reprints 2009.

38 – Luke Gartlan, ‘‘‘A Complete Craze’’:

Isabella Bird Bishop in East Asia’,

PhotoResearcher, 15 (April 2011), 13–26. The

Murray Archive is accessible online: http://

digital.nls.uk/jma/.

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http://digital.nls.uk/jma/

http://digital.nls.uk/jma/

More than twenty years later, Gertrude Bell travelled through Iran and made a

photographic record of her travels. This material, including her photographic

albums, diaries and personal correspondence, is preserved in the Gertrude Bell

Archive at Newcastle University Library.39 Album Q includes all her photographs

taken in Iran in March 1911. Of the 236 photographs in this album, just one depicts

women, and those are part of a family portrait. Bell’s work was clearly focused on

archaeological sites and landscapes, presenting therefore a different view in her

photographs. Her diary contains no references to women’s issues. Bell is, however,

one of the most important early twentieth-century travellers to Iran motivated by

archaeological research.40 In her Safar Nameh. Persian Pictures. A Book of Travel, we

find a chapter entitled ‘Three Noble Women’, in which she gives insights into N�aser-

ed-Din Shah’s andarun and how he built his harem, together with an account of the

marriage of all his daughters.41

At the beginning of the Pahlavi Era, in the early 1930s, there were at least three

women photographer travellers in Iran: the French writer Freya Stark (1893–1993,

active in Iran 1930–31), the German painter, writer and composer Charlotte E. Pauly

(1886–1981, active in Iran 1932) and the Swiss journalist, archaeologist and philo-

sopher Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908–1942, travelled in Iran 1933 and 1935).

None of them had a particular interest in photographing women, however, although

they did produce interesting work in this area.

Stark visited Iran twice between 1930 and 1932, for which she received the

Royal Geographical Society Memorial Grant and the Royal Asiatic Society

Burton Memorial Medal.42 She took photographs of landscapes and of the

people. According to Malise Ruthven, she formed the idea of visiting Iran in

1929, with the intention of exploring the ancient Ismaili castles in the Elburz

mountains in Mazandaran.43 She departed in May 1930 and returned to the

valleys in August 1931, visited Tehran in September and then headed to

Luristan. She travelled through Iran again in 1943 and 1959. Her photographs

are housed in St Antony’s College, Oxford.44 During her exceptionally long life,

she travelled throughout Asia, even making a trip to Nepal when she was

ninety-one years old.

Pauly was not known hitherto as a photographer in Iran. We discovered her and

her photographic archive through her nephew, Dr Bodo von Dewitz, owner of her

archive. Pauly travelled by car from Spain to Iran. In 1932 she visited Kermanshah,

Tehran, Isfahan, Persepolis, Shiraz, Qom, Rasht and Lahijan.45 On her return to

Europe, she painted numerous works based on her drawings and photographs made

during her travels.46 She also wrote a manuscript, entitled ‘Ein Mosaik aus bunten

Kacheln’, which remains unpublished.47

A few months after Pauly travelled through Iran, another extraordinary woman

undertook a similar trip. Annemarie Schwarzenbach, an outstanding photographer,

has left a rich legacy of the places that she visited in Iran in the 1930s.48 There is an

impressive database with her work at the Swiss National Library.49 Of the 461

photographs Schwarzenbach took in Iran, more than thirty represent women.

Most of her works are landscapes of the Elburz mountains, Isfahan, Mazandaran,

Shiraz, Tabriz and Persepolis.50 Her portraits of women are interesting due to their

variety: there are portraits of modern Iranian women dressed in tops and short

dresses, and there are also groups of fully covered women in small villages; there are

also mixed couples and group portraits.

Foreign Travel Magazines and Academic Journals

Not only European travellers printed Sevruguin’s photographs without crediting

him. Travel magazines of the early twentieth century, such as National Geographic,

also did so. In April 1921National Geographic published an issue devoted to Persia.51

It included two long articles: ‘Modern Persia and Its Capital’ (forty-seven illustra-

tions and n pages) by F. L. Bird, who was for five years an American college instructor

39 – This source is available online: http://

www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/index.php.

40 – For further information, see Julia

M. Asher-Greve, ‘Gertrude Bell, 1868–1926’,

in Breaking Ground, ed. Getzel and Sharp

Joukowsky.

41 – Getrude Lowthian Bell, Safar Nameh.

Persian Pictures. A Book of Travel, London:

Richard Bentley and Son 1894, 96–111. This

travelogue has been published in a modern

edition in Getrude Bell and Liora Lukitz,

Persian Pictures, London and New York:

Anthem Studies in Travel 2005.

42 – For a selection of her photographic

work in Persia and biographical references,

see Malise Ruthven, Freya Stark in Persia,

Reading: Garnet Publishing 1994.

43 – Ibid., 9.

44 – Stark left her collection of fifty thousand

photographs to St. Antony’s College Middle

East Centre at Oxford University. See: http://

www.idc.nl/pdf/250_guide.pdf.

45 – Pauly’s diary was published as Aus den

Orientalischen Reisetagebuchern der Malerin

Charlotte E. Pauly (1886 bis 1891) nebst

Lesezeichnen. Eine Wurdigung, Koln:

Katzengraben-Presse 1996.

46 – Between 1960 and 1962 Pauly executed

some thirty paintings based on her

photographs and drawings. See Charlotte E.

Pauly, exhibition catalogue, Staatliche

Museen zu Berlin, 1986, 60–9; and Anita

Kuhnel, Charlotte Elfriede Pauly. Verzeichnis

der Tiefdrucke, Berlin: Kunstwissenschaftler-

und Kunstkritiker-Verband e.V. 1993, 45ff.

47 – We are grateful to Bodo von Dewitz for

granting us access to his aunt’s unpublished

manuscript, paintings and photographs.

48 – We are grateful to Elmar Siebel for

making us aware of Schwarzenbach’s trip

and of her work in Persia.

49 – See http://www.helveticarchives.ch;

www.helveticarchives.ch; then written:

‘Annemarie Schwarzenbach Persien’.

50 – For further information and for more of

her photographs, see Barbara Stempel, Asien

Sichten. Reisefotografien von Annemarie

Schwarzenbach und Walter Bosshard,

Kromsdorf: Verlag und Datenbank fur

Geisteswissenschaften 2009; Annemarie

Schwarzenbach. Orientreisen. Reportagen aus

der Fremde, ed. Walter Fahnders, Berlin:

Ebersbach edition 2010; and Behrang

Samsami, Die Entzauberung des Ostens. Der

Orient bei Hesse, Wegner und Schwarzenbach,

Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag 2011.

51 – F. L. Bird, ‘‘Modern Persia and Its

Capital’’; Harold F. Weston, ‘‘Persian

Caravan Sketches’’, The National Geographic

Magazine, Vol. XXXIX, Nr. 4 (April 1921),

353–468.

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http://www.helveticarchives.ch;www.helveticarchives.ch

http://www.helveticarchives.ch;www.helveticarchives.ch

in Tehran, and ‘Persian Caravan Sketches’ (sixty-two illustrations and fifty-one

pages) by Harold F. Weston. When reviewing this magazine, it is striking to see the

contrast between photographs of Iranian women that illustrate these articles and

those of American women depicted in advertisements in the magazine. On page 372

there is an uncredited photograph by Sevruguin, whose caption reads ‘The

almost blind leading the really blind in Persia’ (figure 7). Next to the caption,

there is a short text:

There are many blind persons in Persia, owing partly to the intense light rays ofthe sun. Tradition gives the following origin for the wearing of the veils byMohammedan women: One day when the Prophet was seated with his favoritewife, Ayesha, a passing Arab admired her, expressed a wish to purchase her, andoffered a camel in exchange. This experience so angered Mohammed that thecustom of requiring women to wear veils resulted.52

Figure 7. Attributed to Faye Fisher (but

probably Sevruguin’s), date unknown.

Printed in ‘Modern Persia and Its Capital’,

National Geographic Magazine (April 1921),

372.

52 – Ibid., 372.

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The caption talks about blind people and the accompanying text refers to them only

in the first sentence. The remaining sentences are devoted to the western obsession

with the Muslim veil, something that is repeatedly found in the two articles. In

contrast, the advertisements where the western women are depicted deserve analysis

too. The page with an advertisement for the Motor Car Company depicts a modern

smiling woman holding a bouquet of flowers and waving to four elegant young

women sitting on a black car, reflecting an emancipated attitude. The photographs of

Iranian woman selected for this issue contrast deeply with the western women

represented in this advertisement.53 Some pages later an American Radiator

Company advertisement depicts an elegant young American woman admiring a

modern heating machine. After the articles devoted to Iran, we find twenty-eight

pages of advertisements. In one there is an advertisement for the Eastman Kodak

Company depicting an independent young woman carrying a Kodak. With this

kind of advertisement George Eastman and other companies began to direct camera

advertising specifically at female consumers. The modern clothes, loose hair and

independence of this young woman contrast strongly with the fully covered Iranian

women and their companions. Another example of a journal using Sevruguin’s

photographs without crediting him is Welt des Islam. Lander und Menschen von

Marokko bis Persien, published in Munich in 1917; this was written by the German

scholar Dr Walter Phillipe Schulz (1824–1920) and is illustrated with two hundred

photographs covering the Islamic lands from Morocco to Persia, forty-seven of them

taken in Iran. Schulz was a collector and scholar of Islamic Art and was well known for

his knowledge of Persian miniature painting. In autumn 1897 he travelled to Iran to

Tehran, East and Central Iran. He bought many works of art on his trip that are now

housed in the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig.54

The journal contains three chapters amounting to twenty-eight pages – ‘Der

Islamische Orient: Land und Leute’, ‘Die Islamischen Staaten’ and ‘Die Zivilisation des

Islams’ – together with six pages of notes; the remainder is made up of photographs.

The captions are well written, accurate and without subjective interpretation. Schulz

published seven photographs of women, most of them by Sevrugin. Even if a couple

of the images could be considered Orientalist, Schulz’s use of them does not fit that

discourse: his text, when referring to women, is devoid of Orientalism, and the

images he uses are treated as examples to visualise how a Persian woman would look

(the captions reveal that his ‘reading’ was more focused on the sitter’s clothes than on

their attitudes).

In summary, the most significant collections by European photographers active

in Iran in the Qajar era are those by Dieulafoy, Sevruguin, Holtzer and Orde�n. In the

first decade of the Pahlavi Era, the work of Annemarie Schwarzenbach deserves

further research, as does the work of Maynard Owen Williams and the Citroen

expedition. These collections enable us to visualise changes in social attitudes,

behaviour and clothing in Iranian society in the period. By comparing early photo-

graphs with those produced in the Pahlavi Era, we can see the opening of society to a

more modern world. European women photographers produced documentary

photography, whereas men produced both documentary and staged photographs

within their studios.

Male Iranian Photographers

Images of women and the portrayal of their femaleness were considered taboo in

Islamic culture. Traditionally their images in Persianminiature painting and in Qajar

portraiture painting gave no notion of individuality and feminine gender. As stated

by Afshaneh Najmabadi, a scholar active in the field of representation of women in

Qajar Era paintings:

Qajar Iran began with notions of beauty that were largely gender-undifferentiated; that is, beautiful men and women were depicted with very

53 – This image contrasts with that advanced

by Rez�a Kh�an from 1921. See further Farid

Fadaizadeh and Reza Sheikh’s article ‘The

Man Who Would be the King. The Rapid

Rise of Rez�a Kh�an (1921–25)’ in the present

volume.

54 – For information on his collection and

on Schulz’s biography, see Reingard

Neumann, Karin Ruhrdanz, Mohammad

Malmanesh, Inge Seiwert, Friederike Voigt

and Jutta Marie Schwed, Rosen und

Nachtigallen. Die 100–jahrige Iran-

Sammlung des Leipzigers Phillip Walter

Schulz, Leipzig: Museum fur Volkerkunde zu

Leipzig 2000.

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similar facial and bodily features. Sometimes the only way one can tell who ismale or female is through style of headgear.55

By the end of the nineteenth century, as she states further:

We have highly gender-differentiated portrayals for beauty. For one thing,depictions of male beauty, andmale-male loving couples, completely disappear.Royal portraits of the late- and post-Nasiri period do not have the slim waistsand facial features associated with beautiful male bodies of earlier decades.Similarly, female figures become more individualized and distinct in facialand bodily features.56

According to Najmabadi, there are four causes for this change: a turn to naturalism

and realism away from idealised painting (through interaction with European

schools); the effect of the camera and the use of photographs as models for realist

painting; the disavowal of male beauty as object of male desire; and the entry of

women into the domain of visibility.57

In Qajar portraiture we can find images of women playing instruments, dancing

with castanets and sometimes resting or drinking. The most striking of all female

portraits are those depicting women-acrobats, who played an important role as

entertainers at court. Realistic representations of women’s beauty were not seen

until Kam�al-ol-Molk appeared on the scene. Even if women were not themain theme

of his paintings, he left enough portraits of women that show us how the aesthetics in

representing/depicting women in painting moved towards naturalism. In fact, it was

in the last years of the Qajar dynasty that painting and then photography took an

interest in portraying women. Najmabadi argues:

Towards the end of the nineteenth century and beginning decades of thetwentieth, we do find more representations of real women and fewer of thefantastic. This development is partially related to the movement of women intopublic spaces, which at once made them ‘more representable’ and made publicrepresentation of fantasy women quite embarrassing.58

N�aser-ed-Din Shah and His Photographers

Of the Qajar monarchs N�aser-ed-Din Shah was the one who most appreciated the

arts, admiring painting, photography and calligraphy. An artist himself, he was

curious, creative and enthusiastic about the new things he discovered during the

three protracted excursions to Europe, in 1873, 1875 and 1883. Among the portrait

photographs taken of N�aser-ed-Din Shah during these journeys, two were taken by

the Austrian photographer Adele Perlmutter-Heilperin (active in Vienna after 1862)

(figure 8).59 The second is preserved in the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Art in

Budapest.60 Perlmutter-Heilperin must have taken these photographs during 1873,

when N�aser-ed-Din Shah visited Austria. On the back of the picture are the stamp

and signature of the Perlmutter-Heilperin studio and the date 1874. Perlmutter-

Heilperin was then the most successful female photographer in Vienna. One of the

most famous portraits of her was taken by the Austrian photographer Fritz

Luckhardt (1843–1984), who was to become the mentor of the Iranian court

photographer ¢Abdoll�ah Mirz�a Qajar (1849–1907) during his five-year stay in

Austria to acquire expertise in photography and in contemporary printing

techniques.61

N�aser-ed-Din Shah is considered an influential figure in the history of Iranian

photography because he was a photographer himself and the development of photo-

graphy in Iran is attributable to him. But his fame in the world of photography

outside Iran depends on the numerous photographic portraits he took of his wives.62

We can recognise the most influential of his wives by the number of times they were

photographed and from their complicity with the Shah in the way that they were

posed. As Amanat stated:

55 – Afshaneh Najmabadi, ‘Gendered

Transformations: Beauty, Love, and

Sexuality in Qajar Iran’, Iranian Studies,

34:1–4 (2001), 89.

56 – Ibid., 91.

57 – Ibid., 91–2. For the effect of the camera

on realist painting, see Maryam Ekthiar,

‘From Workshop and Bazaar to Academy:

Art Training and Production in Qajar Iran’,

in Royal Persian Paintings. The Qajar Epoch

1785–1925, ed. Diba and Ekthiar, New York:

I. B. Tauris Publishers 1999, 60.

58 – Afsaneh Najmabadi, ‘Reading for

Gender through Qajar Painting’, in Diba and

Ekthiar Royal Persian Paintings, 86, n. 1. See

also Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women With

Moustaches and Men Without Beards,

Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of

California Press 2005.

59 – Adele Perlmutter-Heilperin co-owned

the studio with her two brothers. The studio

prospered and was named Photographer to

the Imperial Court. In 1890 Perlmutter-

Heilperin turned over management of the

studio to one of her brothers.

60 – Printed in Be�la Kele�nyi and Ivan Szanto,

Artisans at the Crossroads: Persian Arts of the

Qajar Period, Budapest: Ferenc Hopp

Museum of Eastern Art Publisher 2010.

61 – Luckhardt, who was also at that time the

First Secretary of the Viennese Photographic

Association, was born in Germany but after

short stays in Paris and England settled in

Vienna in 1865, where he opened his own

studio. See Anna Auer, Die vergessene Briefe

und Schriften. Nie�pce, Daguerre, Talbot,

Vienna: Photographische Gesellschaft in

Wien 1997, 50–1.

62 – Albums of his wives preserved in the

Golestan Palace Library: Numbers 210, 289,

362, 682.

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In the later years of his reign the Shah complained of the stress caused by therivalry among his wives and their unending demands on him. There were anumber of influential wives of peasant background to whom he felt particularlyattached. Contrary to princesses and other members of the nobility, these womenof low birth better indulged the Shah’s undernourished emotional needs. Two ofthem in particular, Fatima Sultan Anis al-Dawla (d. 1897) and Zubayda AminaAghdas (d. 1893), brought into the royal harem a certain plebeian mentality andlifestyle – and, in the case of the latter, a degree of vulgarity and homeliness – thatappealed to the Shah because of their simplicity.63

These women were the most photographed of the Shah’s wives, and their poses

reveal a playful interaction with the Shah. He photographed everything and any-

thing that belonged to him and his enthusiasm for photography, specifically

photography of the women in his harem, was instrumental in challenging the

boundary of ethical reverence and removal of prevailing moral taboos. But such

a challenge was only possible for the Shah and only under special circumstances.

The prohibition of taking photographs of women was upheld for other photo-

graphers in the court.

In a notice of 8 January 1877 declaring the establishment of the D�ar-ol-FonunPhoto Studio (the second government-established photograph studio in Iran

ordered by the decree of N�aser-ed-Din Shah in 1868, the first being the Royal

Photo Studio at court founded by order of the Shah in 1858), A note in a newspaper

emphasises that women’s presence in the studio is prohibited: ‘Section twelve: This

Figure 8. Adele Perlmutter-Heilperin, Naser-ed-Din Shah, albumen print, 1874. Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, Inv. No. 56.222.

63 – Abbas Amanat, Pivot of the Universe.

Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy,

New York: I. B. Tauris, London 1997, 436.

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studio is established for men only and women are strictly prohibited from entering,

with or without the Islamic garb, whether Moslems or non Moslems who are not

required to wear the veil by their religion’.64

�Aq�a Rez�a Eqb�al-ol-Saltane (1842–89), Iran’s first court photographer and pro-

fessional photographer, complied with the Shah’s ruling in the Royal Studio and

never took photographs of women. The very few photographs of women that survive

by him were taken during the Shah’s travels across the country and under his strict

orders for the purpose of gathering information on various cities and their citizens or

depicting young girls, who were not required to cover themselves according to

Islamic law (figure 9).65 Referring to this practice, T�aj-os-Saltane (1884–1936), one

of N�aser-ed-Din Shah’s daughters, writes in her diary:

At my betrothal when I was eight years old, they took a photograph of me andsent it to my would-be husband. Everyone in the family had seen this picturebecause I was eight and not yet subject to the laws of Islamic covering.66

Individual and group photographs of women of the harem can be found in the

photographic archives of Golest�an Palace Library. Most were taken during trips or

in the private chambers of Shah’s palace. In the course of photographing women

(on instances when the Shah wanted to be included in the picture) and for

developing and printing photographs, the Shah would employ Muchul Kh�an

(1859–1905), one of the court’s ‘child servants’ and Aziz Kh�an Khawje, the court

eunuch.67 Apart from them, no man was allowed into the courtyard of the photo-

graphic studio. The harem was where the Shah’s wives lived and except for the

‘child servants’ and eunuchs, who were in the service of the harem women, no man

was allowed to enter it. Considering the sensitivity of the subject, and the prohibi-

tion of photographing the women in the harem, the question arises of whether the

shah and court photographers used the same facility for the development and

printing of their photographs? Since most of the photographs were taken in the

private chambers of the palace and without the veil, one wonders whether for every

photograph session the Shah would order transportation of necessary equipment

Figure 9. �Aq�a Rez�a, Women in Susamani,

albumen print, 1870. Golest�an Palace

Library, album No. 227.

64 – Rooznameye Elmi (The Science

Newspaper), 1(5 February. 1877), Nr. 4,

notice from Dar-al-Fonun Photo Studio.

65 –Mohammad Reza Tahmasbpour,Nasser

od-Din Shah, the King Photographer, Tehran:

The Iranian History Publishers 2001, 47.

66 – Taj-os-Saltana, Kh�ater�at-e T�aj-os-

Saltane (The Memoirs of Taj ol Saltaneh), by

Mansure Etehadiye, Tehran: The Iranian

History Publishers 1992, 77

67 – Children servants were to play with the

children of the harem and help with routine

chores; some would grow to become

courtiers

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from the royal studio to the private chambers. According to research conducted by

the authors within the documents of the N�aseri era available in Iran’s National

Library and in the archives of Golest�an Palace, from the correspondence of �Aq�a

Rez�a and the Shah and from the Shah’s telegrams to his wife Amine Aqdas and

other noble women (sent when he was on his first journey to Europe in 1873), it can

be deduced that initially when Shah photographed the women of his harem he

would use the same Royal studio for developing and printing the photographs. In a

memorandum to the Shah, �Aq�a Rez�a alarmingly notes:

A number of glass plates of the inner sanctum (large and small ones), are kept inthat studio and the key to it is in various people’s hands. [. . .] My duty is toinform you that either to transport the boxes to be protected in the innersanctum, or to clean the glass plates. It is not good for the plates that they arekept outside. Please be sure that nobody knows of this through me. I am yourservant.68

As his photographic endeavours expanded, however, a separate building within the

private chambers was chosen by the Shah for this purpose, where the entire process

of photography of the court women took place under the direct supervision of the

Shah. In a telegram to Amine Aqdas, the Shah states:

I am very well; the coming back [to Iran], I am rejuvenated and from his joy, Ithank god every hour. The photographs arrived and were divided into groupsand passed on to others. I have placed the photograph of the king that you havesent on a chair, in the middle of the yard: the women come and visit. ‘BabriKh�an sends his regards. From morning till evening, Amine Aqdas is busymending the studio.69

In telegrams sent by the Shah to Amine Aqdas, he writes about management and

repair of the studio and the distribution of his own photograph among the court

women:

How are you? Tell me how the children are. Has the upper studio been cleaned?If any structural repair is required, tell �Aq�a Bashi to bring Me’m�arb�ashi, since Iwould like to fix it properly. The lower studio should be cleaned and ready. Godwilling, we will come to Tehran soon.70

The Shah began his photographic activities in 1858 and continued them until his

death in 1896. His larger family or his wives in the harem were the most important

subjects of his photography. On examining the body of his photographs of women,

group portraits or women travelling, it becomes apparent that he was an enthusiastic

amateur who, through the years, tried to increase his knowledge and expand the

realm of photography. In his late years his photographs showed a finer aesthetic sense

and more solid composition (figure 10). N�aser-ed-Din Shah defied the premise of

oriental or colonial photography. His camera recorded the everyday life of his wives

while travelling or at home in the harem, a phenomenon that in contemporary

photography is called ‘family photography’. In contrast to Colonial and Oriental

photography, in which women are representative of a class or culture, he would write

the name of his subjects next to the photographs. In his photographs, individuality

replaces class, the characteristic of Oriental photography. In the margins of his

photographs of his wives, next to the name of the subject, he would write a memoir

of that day’s photography session.

As we have seen, the Shah not only photographed his private life but in his letters

discussed photographs and photography with his wives. In fact, photography had

become part of his personal life. He did not intend his photographs for public or

commercial distribution and he adhered to prevalent ethical and moral values by

setting up a separate studio, employing child servants and eunuchs and leaving its

management in the hands of his wife Amine Aqdas. Moreover, such considerations

opened up the field for the participation of the women of the harem in the art of

photography, an art that was previously considered masculine. And finally, while the

68 – This document is about the

correspondence of �Aq�a Rez�a and the Shah onthe subject of Harem photographs actually as

negatives not repairs to the inner photograph

studio, housed in the Documentation Centre

of Iran’s National Library, No. 295001223.

69 – Fatemeh Ghaziha, Roznamey-e-

Khaterat-e-N�aser-ed-Din Shah dar Safare

Aval-e- Farangestan 1873 (N�aser-ed-Din

Shah’s memoir newspaper on his first trip

abroad), Tehran: National Document

Organization Publishers of Iran 2000,

Document No. 49, 362–12 A, 501.

70 – Fatemeh Ghaziha, Roznamey-e-

Khaterat-e-N�aser-ed-Din Shah dar Safare

Dovom-e- Farangestan 1878 (N�aser-ed-Din

Shah’s memoir newspaper on his second trip

abroad), Tehran: National Document

Organization Publishers of Iran 2002,

Document No. 96, 362-128 A, 447.

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short skirts and transparent blouses worn by the women may seem exotic to

observers today or to a European women who visited the harem and met the

Shah’s wives in the nineteen century, for the Shah this dress was normal and part

of the everyday life in the harem. Examining the Shah’s photographs of the harem

women within a limited scope (not having had access to all the existing albums in the

archives of the Golestan Palace) and without considering his other photographs and

his personal notes, the reception of those photographs could be misleading for

today’s viewer, especially the non-Iranian viewer.

In this connection, Ali Behdad uses photographs of the Shah’s half-naked wives

to illustrate what he calls a self-Orientalising practice in the king’s work and contends

that N�aser-ed-Din Shah has used the same formula as the Europeans in photograph-

ing his wives as sexual objects. He writes: ‘this image is an example of what one may

call self-orientalizing, by which I mean the practice of seeing and representing oneself

as Europe’s other’.71 This statement is debatable. N�aser-ed-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 such as illustrations, photo-

graphy, private letters and diaries. Building one’s argument based on a single

example (a well known portrait of Anis-od-Dowle in an odalisque pose) and thus

taking a general stance is not a convincing approach. There is an impressive number

of photographs that N�aser-ed-Din Shah took of his wives. Most are sitting on chairs,

Figure 10. Naser od-Din Shah, Anis-od-

Dowle, Wife of the Shah, albumen print, ca.

1880s. Palace Golestan Library, Album No.

289.

71 – Ali Behdad, ‘The Powerful Art of Qajar

Photography: Orientalism and (Self)-

Orientalizing in Nineteenth-century Iran’,

Iranian Studies, 34:1–4 (2001), 148.

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depicted in a frontal pose like those typical of Victorian portraiture. Even if N�aser-

ed-Din Shah had internalised such Orientalist discourse, we will never know what

the real intentions of those images were. We could interpret them (especially the one

of Anis-od-Dowle) as a game of playful complicity between the photographer and

the sitter, man and wife. We could also suggest that they were mocking Orientalist

painters and their simplistic vision of their complex, refined world. The matter

remains open to conjecture until we find some documents that expand our knowl-

edge of the details of those private photo-sessions.72

Male Iranian Photographers Outside Court

Aside from the Shah and the court photographers, many of the nobility in those days,

who had the means and the opportunity of travelling to the West, adopted photo-

graphy as a hobby. Among those was Dust Mohammed Kh�anMo’ayyer-ol-Mam�alek

(1856–1912), the husband of Esmat-od-doleh (1855–1905), a daughter of N�aser-ed-

Din Shah. He and his brother Mirz�a Mohammed Kh�an Heshmat-ol-Mam�alek set up

a studio in their house and became proficient photographers; since they had access to

fully equipped cameras, they were able to experiment and soon both became expert

photographers. Their work can be considered amongst the first by amateur Iranian

noblemen who produced collections of photographs of the women in their house-

hold (figure 11).73

¢Ali Kh�an V�ali, the governor who was in charge of towns in the north-west and

west of Iran (1845/46–1902), produced interesting journalistic photographs of the

women in his governorship, documenting the people in the region.74 In an album of

some four hundred pages are more than one 1,400 photographs documenting his

career as governor at various places in Azerbaijan between 1879 and 1896. The

photographs are captioned in most cases and provide a continuous narrative of his

career. Over sixty photographs depict women. These include groups of women of

Figure 11. Dust Mohammad Kh�anMo ¢ayyer-ol-Mam�alek, Daughter of Dust

Mohammad Kh�an Mo ¢ayyer-ol-Mam�alek, ca.

1990s. Institute for Iranian Contemporary

Historical Studies, Tehran.

72 – Mio Wakita has discussed this topic

more convincingly in relation to some

Japanese photographers of the Yokohama

Shashin school. See Mio Wakita,

‘Photographie als kultureller Topos: Frauen

in der Souvenirphotographie im Kontext der

Meiji-zeitlichen visuellen Kultur’,

Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, 20 (2010), 38–48.

73 – Yahya Zoka, History of Photography and

Pioneer Photographers in Iran, Tehran: Elmi-

Fahrangi Publications 1997, 88. A number of

family photographs of Mo’ayyer-ol-

Mam�alek are kept at the Institute for IranianContemporary Historical Studies in Tehran.

The rest of his legacy is in his family’s

possession.

74 – His pictures are kept in the Golest�an

Palace Library. The most exquisite of his

albums, in Harvard University Library, can

be viewed online: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/

pds/view/6665026?n=149&imagesize=

1200&jp2Res=.125&printThumbnails=no.

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http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/6665026?n=149&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.125&printThumbnails=no



different ethnic backgrounds (figure 12); individual portraits (both veiled and

unveiled); mothers holding babies or small children; mixed couples, one even

holding hands; groups of school girls; street scenery and even a few images of

women during prayers in a mosque. Since the album was put together over more

than fifteen years, the photographs make it possible to track changes in the interac-

tion between men and women in the public sphere.

Gholam ¢Ali Kh�an ¢Aziz-ol-Soltan (1878–1941) known as Malijak, the

courtier of N�aser-ed-Din Shah’s court was himself an enthusiast who became

familiar with the camera in childhood.75 In fact, he is considered the first child

photographer of Iran. In his diaries he frequently mentions photographing his

wife and daughter. He had a darkroom at his home and had good relations

with famous photographers of that time, going, for instance, to Sevruguin’s

studio to print his photographs.76

The taboo of photographing women was broken to the extent that the court

photographer Abdull�ah Mirza ¢Akk�asb�ashi (1849–1907) was also permitted to take

photographs of women of the court and dignitaries. Previous to that, court

photographers were only permitted to take photographs of the women of the

court in their veil and headgear and covering their faces. Abdull�ah Mirz�a was

among western-educated photographers who knew the principles of lighting and

composition and successfully incorporated them in their work. He took several

portraits of court women, including one of Belqeys Kh�anom, sister of T�aj-od-

Dawle (who was one of the wives of N�aser-ed-Din Shah) (figure 13). He also copied

photographs of western women, which shows that at the time there was a demand

for such photographs.77

In Isfahan, a number of photographers took photographs of women. These

included Toori Johannes (1864–1946, active from the 1880s onwards), Min�as

P�atkerh�ani�an Mackertich (1885–1972, active from the 1910s onwards), Mirz�a

Mehdi Kh�an Cheher-Nam�a (1891–1979, active from the 1920s onwards) and

Gholamhoseyn Derakhsh�an (1907–75, active from the 1930s onwards).78

As was mentioned, the presence of Iranians abroad, together with their awareness

of the presence of women in cities and public spaces in Europe, played a catalytic role

in conjunction with overall societal changes brought about by the Constitutional

Revolution during the first two decades of the twentieth century; this led eventually

to changes in Iranian women’s position in the family and society. Women’s associa-

tions were established to increase educated women’s participation in social activities.

Most, like T�aj os-Saltane (daughter of N�aser-ed-Din Shah) and Sediqe Dolat�ab�adi, did

not believe in wearing the veil. Anjoman-e �az�adi (Freedom Association), the first

association of this kind, was founded in 1899. Furthermore, women’s newspapers

played amajor role in developing awareness of women’s rights, in encouraging women

Figure 12. Attributed to Yusuf, A

Photograph of Anis-od-Dowle Taken During a

Trip from Chah�arbarg to Lashkarak, albumen

print, 1893. Palace Golest�an Library, Album

No. 108.

75 – As explained by Amanat, ‘Malijak’,

lterally ‘little sparrow’ in Kurdish, a term of

endearment conferred by the Shah to his

favourite page-boy. ‘Malijak II’ was the son

of ‘Malijak I’, who was the son of a Kurdish

shepherd from Garrus whose sister, Amine

Aqdas, served first as the maid and then as

the rival to the Shah’s favourite wife,

Anis-od-Dowle. See Amanat, Pivot of the

Universe, 420.

76 – Malijak, Mohsen Mirzayi, Ruzn�ame-ye

kh�atera-te Ghol�am Kh�an ¢Aziz-ol-Soltan,Tehran: Zayrab Publisher 1997. For further

information, see Khadijeh Mohammadi

Nameghi and Mohammad Reza

Tahmasbpour, ‘Malijak, the First Child

Photographer’, Aksnameh, 28 (2009), 72–5.

77 – In the Palace Golestan Library there is

an album with photographs of western

women by Abdullah Qajar, Number 877.

78 – See Damandan, Portrait Photography in

Isfahan, 13–57.

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to study and in providing information about schools for girls. Two of the earliest such

newspapers are Shokufe (published first in 1913) by Maryam Amid (Mozayyan-os-

Saltane), and Zab�ane Zan�an by Sediqe Dolat�ab�adi (published in 1919) in Esfahan, and

later, in 1921 in Tehran. Nevertheless, the most important changes resulted from the

change of dynasty and the subsequent Kashf-e Hej�ab (Removal of Veils).

The presence of women in society became more emphasised, and men became

more candid in their relationships to women in the social arena. Thus the beauty of

women began to emerge in the form of realistic pictures of women in paintings by

Kam�al-ol-Molk, as family pictures in photography, and even in romantic scenes of

men and women (figures 14 and 15). In fact, the cultural transformation of society

and family led to the creation of family photographs, which evolved from those of

fathers and children to also include mothers. Many families went to studios to have

their pictures taken, and those pictures were kept in private family albums or

later found their way to public archives. By making pictures of women available

in the public arena, the cultural transformation was catalysed. ¢Ayn-os-Saltane(1872–1945), a prominent dignitary of the Qajar era, refers in his diaries of

1890–94 to shops in Tehran selling women’s photographs: ‘From here I went to

the bazaar and purchased nine new pictures of famous women. The shopkeeper had a

great many women’s portraits. Most were of bad quality. From there, we came

home’.79 He writes further:

There was a photo shop. It had photographs of women. He had taken all thesephotographs himself and knew all their names and position well, but most werebadly composed (i.e. poor quality photographs). Since women are not used tobe subjects for portraits, they do not know how to sit, pose or dress in front ofthe camera. The photographer is also not skilled on directing them on how topose in front of the camera. The combination of their lack of taste with theirdresses, bad poses and ignorance of the photographers have rendered thephotographs useless.80

Figure 13. Abdull�ah Mirz�a Qajar, Belqeys

Kh�anum, albumen print, 1891. Teheran

University Library, Album No. 769.

79 – Iraj Afshar and Masoud Salur, ¢Ayn-os-Saltane Memoirs (newspaper), Tehran: Asatir

Publications 1990, 356.

80 – Iraj Afshar and Masoud Salur,

Roznamey-e- Khaterat-e- ¢Ayn-os-Saltane¢Ayn-os-Saltane Memoirs (newspaper),

Tehran: Asatir Publications 1990, 707.

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With the establishment of public studios, photography ventured into Armenian

families and Armenian women were amongst the first to enter such studios. At the

end of the nineteenth century and during the course of the constitutional revolu-

tion, women and girls who had been confined to their homes began to demand

rights.81 Educated Iranian women began publishing their own newspaper in order

Figure 15. ¢Ali Kh�an V�ali, Couple Holding

Hands, albumen print, ca. 1890s. Harvard

University Library.

Figure 14. Unknown, Hasan Mostofi when

he was Young with his Wife, Esmat-ol-Moluk

Mo’ayyeri, date unknown. Institute for

Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies,

Tehran.

81 – Mansoure Etehadieh, ‘Bid�ari-ye Zan�an’,

Inj�a Tehr�an Ast, Tehran: T�arikh-e Iran

Publications 1988, 289–308.

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to combat illiteracy among women and elevate the level of their consciousness.

Some upper-class women, educated, wealthy and at the forefront of women’s social

movement, shed their traditional attire, uncovered their hair and visited photo-

graphy studios wearing European-style clothes. The most famous was T�aj-os-

Saltane, N�aser-ed-Din Shah’s daughter, of whom many photographs survive. The

requirements of modern urban life, the eagerness of families for photographs and

the need to abide by social and religious conventions made the presence of trained

women photographers desirable. Attention to women’s education and the oppor-

tunity to establish girls’ schools in accordance with new educational methods came

about in the cultural and intellectual circles of post-constitutional revolution. In

1909, in the newspaper The New Iran, Tehran’s N�aseri Girl School announced

photography as part of its curriculum. Apart from reflecting the significant growth

of photography in Iran, this revealed women’s interest in the new art and their wish

to learn the craft.82

Iranian Women Photographers

Information on women photographers is limited to names extracted from indirect

sources. Unfortunately, the men who wrote history tended to bypass women’s

endeavours. From the little we know we can deduce that more educated women of

the upper classes and wives of professional photographers had a better chance of

learning photography. This is not unique to Iran. As Naomi Rosenblum states: ‘most

frequently, a woman would help her spouse in a photography business and then take

it over after his death’.83 Rosenblum states further that:

as the techniques for producing portrait photographs changed, women werecalled upon for retouching as well as colouring. This skill, taught in schools,remained women’s work into the twentieth century, perhaps because, as onewriter put it in the mid-1880s, a women skilled in retouching ‘would havesecured greater pay if she had been a man’.84

Ozr�a Kh�anom (dates unknown), the wife of �Aq�a Yusef ¢Akk�asb�ashi (active1894–95), one of the court photographers, along with her elder sister Fateme-

Soltan Kh�anom (unknown birth-death dates), who was married to Mirz�a Hasan

¢Ali ¢Akk�as (active 1877 to 1899), both engaged in family photography, taking

photographs of women and children.85 Apart from these, Ashraf-os-Saltane (1863–

1914), the wife of Mohamad Hasan Kh�an E’temad-os-Saltane, minister and transla-

tor to N�aser-ed-Din Shah, was one of the women photographers of her time. She was

born in Kerm�anshah but moved to Tehran when she married. She did not have

children but studied history, medicine, French and the technique of photography

with Prince Soltan Mohammad Mirz�a. After her husband’s death, she remarried and

moved toMashhad.86 She was a very unusual woman for her time, in so far as she led

a life devoted to self-education. The best source of information on this pioneering

woman photographer, written eight years after her death, is by Soltan Ahmad

Dowlatsh�ahi Yamin-od-Dowle.87

Apart from Tehran, the growth of photography was evident in other cities in

Iran. The art was pioneered in Shiraz by Mirz�a Hasan ¢Akk�asb�ashi (1854–1916), thepatriarch of the Chehreneg�ar family of photographers. Habibe Zam�an (dates

unknown), and gy ¢Azize Jah�an (dates unknown), two of whose daughters showed

interest in photography. Their birth dates birth are not known, but we have seen a

family portrait photograph (dated 1899) in which we can see both when they were

children of approximately eight years old; so, they were probably born ca. 1890.88

They opened the first women’s studio in Shiraz in 1928. Azize Jah�an wrote as follows

of her beginnings in photography:

After the death of my father Mirz�a Hasan, since women were not prepared tohave their photographs taken by men who were not related to them, my sister,our cousin and I established a photo studio and took their photographs. I was

82 – This announcement was printed in the

Iran-E-No (The New Iran) newspaper

83 – Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women

Photographers, Paris, London, New York:

Abbeville Press 1994, 48.

84 – Ibid., 48; as quoted from George

J. Manson, ‘Work for Women in

Photography’, Philadelphia Photographer,

20 (1883), 37.

85 – The only information available to us

about these women is contained in Zoka,

History of Photography, 180–1.

86 – See Zoka,History of Photography, 178–9;

translated by the author from the original in

Persian.

87 – See Zoka,History of Photography, 178–9.

88 – The photograph is reproduced in

Mansour Sane, The Emergence of

Photography in Shiraz, Tehran: Sorush

Publications 2000, 13.

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eleven when I took my first photographs. I had to climb a stool to reach thecamera and after the photo session I did the printing and touching up myself inorder to keep them from the eyes of unrelated men, using the skills that I hadlearned from my uncle Mirz�a Mohamad Rahim.89

Mary Sevruguin (dates unknown) started working in her father’s studio three or four

years before he died. Nevertheless, not much information is available, and her life

and work merit further research. With time, the number of female photographers

increased considerably, to the point that in the early 1930s it was almost the same as

that for male photographers. In the census conducted in Tehran in 1932 and in the

category of professions related to science and technology, and in the subcategory of

light industries, the number of photographers was 292, 176 of whom were men and

116 women. In the trade of film and photograph equipment there were six people

(two men and four women).90 These figures point to fundamental changes in the

position of women in Iranian society, culturally and in the realm of photography.

A fundamental event influencing the presence of women sitters in photography

was the removal of the veil (referred to in Iran as kashf-e hej�ab). Many photographs

document the events following the government decree of 6 January 1936. As an

example, the women of the royal family appeared in public without the veil (ch�ador)

(figure 16), and shortly after that all employees and staff-members working for the

government were ordered to follow the kashf-e hej�ab, so that their wives had to

appear in the public scene without the veil. Next, the same was tried in the streets and

policemen did not allow women to wear the veil, often treating them violently and

requiring them to walk without a veil. There are many photographs of unveiling

Figure 16. Molud (daughter of T�ahere), Untitled, 1909. Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies, Tehran.

89 – Ibid., 29–30.

90 – Cyrus Sa ¢dvandiaan, Adad-e- Abniy-e-Shomare Nofos Az Darolkhelafe ta Tehran

(Number of Buildings and population from

Dar Al-Khelafe to Tehran) (1852–1932),

Tehran: Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guide 2001.

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parties in different cities of Iran and we tend to infer a link between removing veil

and photography.

In fact, there is amarked contrast between Rez�a Shah’s approach to photography

of women (public use) and N�aser-ed-Din Shah’s (private use). Rez�a Shah used

camera and photographic images as an aid to his power and to give statement of

the unveiling movement. Moreover, he used photography to produce an image of a

modern Iran for the rest of the world. So, the first time that photographs of women

were published for the public resulted from an official order of the Shah. In sharp

contrast to this, N�aser-ed-Din Shah was very cautious about the use of photographs

of his wives, and they remained objects of private use. In other words, Rez�a Shah used

photography to show his power (figure 17), while N�aser-ed-Din Shah preferred to

amuse himself with the camera while discovering this innovative medium, using his

wives as his sitters.

Conclusion

In general, the number of photographs of women produced in the period considered

here is significantly less than that for men. Religious prescriptions and female

‘invisibility’ are the main reasons for this. This disparity was also visible in Qajar

portraiture painting. The change of dynasty and the subsequent change of codes of

clothing, followed by the forced unveiling of women in 1936, had a fundamental

impact on female photographic portraiture. Four decisive factors are: changes in the

external appearance of the sitters; changes in women’s accessibility; the appearance

of women in outdoor photography; and the fact that gender-mixed portraits were

introduced.

The number of female European photographers who portrayed Iranian women

is remarkably high, even if most were not exclusively interested in photographing

women; in fact, all of them produced male portraits also. Their work was produced

outdoors or in private houses, never in studios, since none of them worked as

professionals. In contrast, Iranian women photographers, who appeared on the

scene thirty years later, would only take portraits of female sitters within the studio;

Figure 17. Unknown photographer, T�aj-os-

Saltane, ca. 1930s. Private collection.

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this was again due to social and cultural restrictions. With the change in dynasty, the

numbers of local women photographers increased considerably.

Male European traveller-photographers produced few photographs of Iranian

women. Non-Iranian photographers residing in Iran produced a significant corpus

of Iranian women portraits; some staged in their studios, some with an anthropo-

logical approach. Iranian male photographers did not produce staged Orientalist

images. Iranian photographers were not allowed to photograph Iranian women until

the late nineteenth century. N�aser-ed-Din Shah photographed his wives during the

same time period as the Europeans. He was among the few Iranians who practised

photography at the time; his practice of photographing his wives lasted for more than

a decade. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, when court-commissioned

Iranian photographers engaged in recording Iranian ways of life, they could actively

work in the countryside, where social norms were much more relaxed, and, there-

fore, it became easier for them to photograph women, whose social behaviour and

clothing codes were more relaxed than in the cities.

Women first appeared in the photographs of the upper classes in single portraits

and then, with the relaxation of societal norms and greater access to the West, women

assumed leading positions in the family, which results in an increased women’s

presence as mother and wife in family photographs. After the Constitutional

Revolution and the rise in women’s awareness, the publication of women’s news-

papers, the formation of women’s societies and the establishment of girl schools,

women played important roles behind the camera, not just as sitters but also as

photographers, thereby transcending their traditional passive roles.

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From Sitters to Photographers: Women Photography from the Qajar Era through the 1930s (authors:...

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