War, Technology Transfer, and Local Archive-Keeping

Refik Akyüz, Serdar Darendeliler

(Chapter II of the book 'A Witness from Anatolia: Early Republican-Era Mudurnu through Bengüboz’s Lens')

Ayşe Ege Yıldırım (ed.), Koç University VEKAM, Ankara, 2016, pp.19-27 

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"We live in a region where photography, which emerged almost simultaneously in France and England in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, quickly found its way into everyday life and where, at least during a certain period in the history of photography, significant work was produced. In the 19th century, when photography was still in its infancy, we can speak of a geography that was home to studios producing work of international standards in certain fields of photography. We use the term “geography” rather than “country” primarily because, although concentrated in Istanbul, these photographic studios were located across a territory that encompassed the Ottoman Empire as a whole and therefore extended beyond the borders of present-day Turkey.

The First World War, which ended the Ottoman Empire almost a century ago, brought about profound changes that continue to lie at the root of many problems that remain unresolved today. The photographers who had come to define the final years of the Ottoman Empire were also swept up in this upheaval, giving way to a new generation. Ahmet İzzet Bengüboz, whose work you will see in this exhibition, was one of these photographers. He lived and worked in Mudurnu, and his story is directly connected to the First World War: he began his career as a photographer immediately after the war.

The photographs of Ahmet İzzet Bengüboz have survived as a remarkably coherent body of work, emerging from among other possible local archives—most likely lost or yet to be discovered—and preserved and carried into the present as an important source of memory. The portraits in this body of work bring the faces of Mudurnu at the time into the present, while also revealing the photographer behind them, who approached his work with the determination of a director, creating an almost systematic record of his surroundings. Bengüboz’s story contains elements that set him apart from the other Muslim Turkish photographers we know to have been working at the time."

(Excerpt from the article)

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