The Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives
Overview
The Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives, developed at the Semitic Museum between 1891 and 1992, comprise one of the world's most important concentrations of historical photographs of the Middle East. The Archives hold approximately 38,500 images in a wide variety of formats from a multitude of sources. The Core Collection comprises those albumen silver prints acquired by the first curator commencing in 1891. Those termed Later Accessioned Materials were acquired by gift after revival of collecting in 1977, and are followed by Unaccessioned Materials, which had not been subjected to collection management procedures at the time the archives were transferred to the Fine Arts Library in 1995, but have received attention since.
More than 70 percent consists of photographic prints: commercial production from the second half of the 19th century and early years of the 20th (mainly standard format albumen silver prints, including several splendid multiple-image panoramic views), a few hundred stereographs, and large numbers of snapshots dating to as early as 1890, in and out of albums. Picture postcards are present in significant numbers, along with a few photogravures and a small, rare group of autochromes. The remainder of the Archives' contents consists of more than 1,300 lantern slides and nearly 9,000 35 mm color slides. Two individual archives include films and one has extensive numbers of audiotapes.
The Fine Arts Library's collections contain an extraordinary range of other visual materials representing the Middle East. The regular collections documenting Islamic, ancient Near Eastern, and classical architecture contain many tens of thousands of photographs and slides, several thousand of the former of 19th century vintage. The Harvard Film Study Center Archive, housed with the Semitic Museum Archives, comprises 798 individual 19th century prints containing a total of 835 images of the Middle East, particularly strong for the Maghrib, but including a splendid album documenting the 1875–1876 voyage of the HMS Serapis, carrying Edward, Prince of Wales, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal (very nicely documented) to Madras and Calcutta. Numerous other collections, albums, and groups of photographs (special collections) akin to those in the Archives presently reside in the Aga Khan Program office, many of great value to urban, architectural, social, and photographic historians. Most have been acquired within the last decade, and represent the Middle East and adjacent regions (Central Asia, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sudan, and Islamic Spain). Furthermore, the book collections contain superb volumes featuring vintage photographs of the Middle East, including works by Francis Frith and Francis Bedford.
- For additional information and assistance, please contact Jeff Spurr, Islamic and Middle Eastern Specialist, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, by phone at 617-495-3372, by fax at 617-496-4889, or via e-mail.
The Core Collection
The Archives were transferred from the Harvard Semitic Museum to the Historic Photographs and Special Visual Collections of the Fine Arts Library in the spring of 1995 when the museum redefined its mission. In the previous century, these Archives experienced more than their share of vicissitudes. The Semitic Museum was founded in 1889 with the primary goal of providing "a thorough study and a better knowledge of Semitic history and civilization, so that the world shall better understand and acknowledge the debt it owes to the Semitic people." Professor David Gordon Lyon was appointed its first curator in 1891 and in that same year started a photograph collection.
The Core Collection, as it is now called, contained 1,642 photographs numbered in order and acquired during the 1890s. The original accession book records their sources and provides subject descriptions for most of them. The first acquisition comprised 28 photographs from the British Museum, primarily of Mesopotamian and pharaonic artifacts, the most famous being the Rosetta Stone. Developing an extensive photographic collection entailed the purchase of albumen prints from major commercial photographers of the day who specialized in Middle Eastern subjects. These studios were either based primarily in the Middle East, as with the Maison Bonfils in Beirut and Antonio Beato in Cairo; or in Europe, as with Francis Frith in London and Jean Laurent in Madrid. In addition to the preponderance of photographs devoted to the Middle East, 215 photographs of the classical monuments of Rome were added, all but nine by the Fratelli Alinari of Florence. A total of 93 photographs, mostly of Islamic Spain, are now missing, the largest being the complete original set for Islamic Spain. This early acquisition period brought the first gift of photographs to the museum, 120 taken by J.H. Haynes in 1887 of ancient and Islamic sites in Anatolia and northern Syria.
The geographical reach of the Core Collection is primarily present-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. This was complemented by the now-missing material from Islamic Spain, photographs of the classical monuments of Rome, and the Haynes material for Anatolia and Syria. The subjects of the early commercial photographs in this Core Collection reflect virtually all of the prevailing interests and preoccupations of the time, although a particular concern was to visually describe the sacred topography, real and imagined, of the Holy Land. Alongside such biblical materials are to be seen pharaonic, classical, Christian, and Islamic monuments. Photographs of towns and villages reveal the vernacular architecture of the region. Jewish and "modern" monuments are represented to a lesser degree. An interest in views depicting daily life reflects in part the 19th century penchant to illustrate biblical scenes employing the dress of the contemporary population; however, there is a more general ethnographic impulse at work as well. Some of these photographs are more staged and some more spontaneous, partially a function of the state of photographic technology at the time they were taken. There are also numerous studio views, in the main representing local "types." Often these reflect Orientalist preoccupations and the conventions of the salient genre painting of the Victorian age.
Although its intended purpose may have been as a pictorial resource for teaching and research, there is no clear evidence concerning the pedagogical role of this collection at the time of its development. That the photographs tend to be in superb condition might indicate that they received little attention over the years.
It is much easier to discern the educational purpose of another class of materials, 524 British Museum photos of excavated objects from Mesopotamia. These especially include cuneiform tablets and relief sculpture, among other things, which dramatically augmented the very first acquisition from this source. This is referred to as the archaeological collection in contrast to the Core Collection with its primarily architectural, landscape, and ethnographic focus. In 1908 Professor George Reisner introduced systematic archaeological photography for the first time at the Harvard Semitic Museum dig at Samaria, which initiated a new way of recording the process and results of excavation and quickly became the field standard. All such materials as well as the 524 British Museum photographs have remained at the Semitic Museum with the limited exception of the first 28 photos acquired by the museum, mentioned above.
Note: Photographs and slides documenting antiquities and archaeological sites are to be found amongst many of the collections, albums, and accumulations of images acquired by the Semitic Museum between 1977 and 1992. These have remained integral to the specific constituent parts of the Archives. Consequently, they are to be found at the Fine Arts Library.
The interwar period was one of relative institutional weakness at the Semitic Museum. Professor Lyon adopted the status of honorary curator as of 1922 and no salaried replacement was appointed until 1931. During World War II the museum was given over to the war effort, first as a school for U.S. Army chaplains, later as a U.S. Navy Japanese language instruction center. At some point during this period, probably in 1942, the photographic collection was consigned to the museum's attic and quickly lost to memory. At its founding in 1958, the Center for International Affairs was provided the two upper floors of the museum for its offices, where it remained through 1978. Its most prominent and controversial fellow was Henry Kissinger and, due to his role in Vietnam, two young radical women bombed his office in 1970. The blast caused no injuries but did blow a hole in the third floor ceiling. Investigation of the damage to the attic revealed the existence of the long-forgotten photographs.
By the 1970s there was a revival of interest in and new awareness of the documentary, historiographic, and artistic value of early photographs. What had once been considered of little account was now perceived as a real visual treasure. The newly discovered photographs became the focus of much activity at the museum involving research, exhibitions, and publications, particularly regarding the Bonfils family and its photographic production. These activities and attendant publicity made the museum and its Core Collection a magnet for gifts of a wide range of photographic materials between 1977 and 1992.
The early 1990s proved to be a time of crisis for the Semitic Museum. In 1993 this led to an institutional redefinition and rationalization resulting in a strictly archaeological orientation for the Museum, with the consequent loss of the custodians of the photographic collections. The fate of these now orphaned collections thus became an issue. After much discussion, a proposal to house the collections intact in the Historic Photographs and Special Visual Collections of the Fine Arts Library, with the Aga Khan Program to provide managerial assistance due to area expertise, was eventually accepted by all involved parties. The strictly archaeological material was retained by the Museum.
Later Accessioned Materials (1977–1992)
The Semitic Museum's photographic acquisitions of the late 1970s through early 1990s were of a distinctly heterogeneous nature. They ranged from souvenir albums containing albumen prints—augmenting those already in the Core Collection—and collections of travelers' snapshots, to the personal archives of sojourners who had spent time in the Middle East. These additions increased the size of the collection from the ca. 2,200 photographs acquired in the 1890s to approximately 38,500 images in the variety of formats mentioned in the introduction.
These later acquisitions extended the geographical and cultural range of the Archives. All of the Middle East and adjacent regions were represented to a greater or lesser degree, including India, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Caucasus, the Balkans, North Africa, and Spain (here compensating to some extent for the losses to the Core Collection). These additions incidentally included photographs of Italy, Germany, Russia, China, and Korea. The subject matter largely conformed to the range already found in the Core Collection, particularly in regard to the large numbers of newly added 19th century photographs and the lantern slides of commercial origin. However, the advent of the handheld camera and the personal, non-commercial character of many of these archives adds a new particularity and historicity to many of these images, whether they record life at Robert College, Istanbul, the arrival of the Allied fleet in Istanbul at the end of WWI, Armenian refugees in Syria at the same time, Saudi Arabia in the heyday of oil exploration, or Qashqa'i tribesmen on migration in the 1950s.
The Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives contain a total of 103 constituent parts, large and small. Of these, 84 were subjected to the formal accessioning process while under the custodianship of the Semitic Museum. Those that never received this treatment—some of them very important—have been assigned "Add.HSM" numbers since their arrival in the Fine Arts Library. Virtually all of these contain visual images of significant interest to art historians, historians, or ethnographers. Among the largest and most interesting are the following:
Edgar J. Fisher Archive. E.J. Fisher was professor and dean at Robert College, Istanbul, established in the mid-19th century by New England missionaries and educators to provide an English-language education for the Turkish elite. Fisher and his wife seem rarely to have been without their cameras and the collection includes thousands of their snapshots. Fisher seems to have as eagerly acquired photographs from other sources during his tenure in Istanbul from 1913 to 1933. Among the latter are a 10-part panorama of Istanbul ca. 1890 taken from the Galata Tower and embracing a full 240 degrees of view, and an exceptional group of photographs of the American University of Beirut near the turn of the century.
Karl S. Twitchell Archive. Karl Twitchell was an American geologist who, after working in Yemen in 1926, became the first person to undertake a systematic geological survey of Saudi Arabia. Beginning in 1931, he was involved in the exploration for oil and the development of that industry. His extensive photographic record includes Yemen and Arabia plus the work of Charles Crane, and continues up to the early 1950s.
Baroness Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten Archive. Baroness Ullens spent several months every year from 1951 to 1972 in Iran, pursuing her abiding interest in the great nomadic and seminomadic peoples of the west and south, the Qashqa'i and the Bakhtiari, as well as the Kurds and Türkmen. She also documented Sufi dervishes who still followed traditional ways. In addition, she accompanied her friends André and Yedda Godard on the former's rounds as director of the Royal Archaeological Service of Iran. Her archive comprises 4,607 superlative 35 mm color slides, more than 3,000 photographs and negatives, 24 different films, and numerous audiotapes. The images document ancient sites, Islamic architecture, the landscape and ethnography of Iran (and, in a very minor way, personal collections of ancient and Islamic art). The archive also includes André Godard's notebooks from 1925 onwards, containing his meticulous documentation of the monuments, particularly Islamic, that he examined in the field.
Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum. There are 192 glass plate negatives from this monumental project of the beginning of the 20th century by Max van Berchem and Gaston Wiet.
Mendel John Diness Collection. Modern platinum prints from original glass plate negatives by the first professional photographer of Jerusalem to have learned his trade in the city. Dating to ca. 1856–60, Diness' work was virtually unknown until a large cache of negatives was discovered at a St. Paul, Minnesota yard sale in 1989.
Abdul Hamid Albums. Photocopies of the set in the Library of Congress, representing one product of this Ottoman sultan's massive photographic project to bring his empire to him so that he would not have to visit it himself.
Snapshot Collections. Two particular highlights stand out amongst the several albums and collections of snapshots within the Archives. The earliest snapshot collection is contained in an anonymous travel album dated 1890 that features photographs taken with both a first generation Kodak camera, introduced in 1888, and a No. 2 Kodak, issued the next year. This fully portable, technically simple apparatus, which introduced the roll of film, revolutionized picture taking. This early album documents a world tour that happily focused (in photographic terms at least), on Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. These snapshots from the infancy of hand-held photographic technology already demonstrate what high-quality images could be taken by a naturally talented amateur and how interesting the representation of a street-level view of travel could be.
Frank Wagner Peers. Peers spent the years 1919 and 1920 working for the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, stationed in Gaziantep (Aintab to him), Turkey. His presence was occasioned by one of the 20th century's great man-made calamities, the genocide against Armenians and its aftermath, although this is only one of many subjects he records. Peers combined an artistic sensibility with an acute eye and a deft way of accurately recording in captions what he depicted in photographs. He created personally-crafted, illuminated and lettered albums containing fine, small-format photos, which are among the most memorable adornments, documentary and stylistic, of these Archives.
