RT Article
T1 Immigrant Narratives: The Ottoman Sultans' Portraits in Elisabeth Leitner's Family Photo Album, circa 1862-72
JF Muqarnas
VO 35
IS 1
SP 193
OP 228
A1 Avcıoğlu, Nebahat
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2018
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1685133134
AB This article is a study of the family photo album of Elisabeth Leitner (ca. 1842?-1908), a Hungarian immigrant in the Ottoman empire. The album contains a complete set of cartes de visite portraits of the Ottoman sultans by the Abdullah Frères. As the only surviving example of such a collection with a known provenance, it provides a rare opportunity for understanding how such images were used in the context of identity formation and social mobility undertaken by a member of the immigrant population. The album, which has never been studied before, is also a fascinating source for investigating the history of Hungarian immigrants in the Ottoman empire who were displaced after the 1848 Revolution. The article approaches the intriguingly autobiographical album by means of a close reading of Elisabeth Leitner's diaries and unfinished autobiography. My interpretation serves to dismantle notions of a carefree global cosmopolitanism and exposes a historiographical bias that privileges men and their collections of images and ethnographic artifacts over those of women. Elisabeth Leitner's writings and photographic collection also represent a vast and entirely untapped resource for investigating cultural contacts between Europe and the Ottoman empire in the second half of the nineteenth century.
K1 Abdullah Frères
K1 Bursa
K1 Elisabeth Leitner
K1 Hungarian
K1 Istanbul
K1 Leopold Amery
K1 Ottoman sultans
K1 cartes de visite
K1 Connected Histories
K1 family album
K1 Immigrant
K1 Missionaries
K1 Photography
DO 10.1163/22118993_03501P009