Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era

Description

Featuring over 100 colour images, this book explores the photographic self-representations of the urban middle classes in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining the relationship between photography and gender, body, space as well as materiality and language, its six chapters explore how the production and circulation of vernacular photographs contributed to the making of the modern Turkish citizen in the formative years of the Turkish Republic, when nation-building, secularization and modernization reforms took centre stage. Based on an extensive photographic archive, the book shows that individuals actively reproduced, circulated and negotiated the ideal citizen-image imposed by the Kemalist regime, reflecting not only state-imposed directives but also their class aspirations and other, wider social and cultural developments of the period, from Western fashion trends and movies to the increasing availability of modern consumer items. Calafato also reveals that the freedom from state control afforded by personal cameras allowed the desired image to be sometimes tweaked by incorporating elements from Ottoman and Turkic traditions, by pushing the boundaries of gender norms or by introducing playfulness. Making the Modern Turkish Citizen offers a valuable portrait of the ongoing political and social changes on the lives of the Turkish middle class, and of how they saw and wanted to present themselves, privately and publicly.

OEzge Baykan Calafato is Guest Researcher at University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since 1999, she has worked as a journalist, editor and translator for several magazines focusing on photography, literature, contemporary art, film, jazz and travel.

"Offering sophisticated analyses of a selection of vernacular photographs, this book traces how the construction of the modern Turkish citizen can be found in such pictures, with a particular emphasis on their articulation of gender, bodies, spaces and language. Although embedded in a social history of Turkey, Ozge Calafato's complex study will be of interest to anyone who cares about photography and its capacity for individual and collective agency. Highly recommended!" * Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of History of Art, University of Oxford, UK * "Calafato's close reading of vernacular photographs offers a refreshingly nuanced, complex and ambivalent picture of early republican Turkish society beyond the cliches of official representations. Like a detective working with visual clues, she analyzes studio portraits, family pictures and ordinary snapshots for the gender and class performativity of their urban middle-class subjects, pointing out subtle negotiations between the normative and the subversive in these images. Drawing on photography theory, visual anthropology, gender and cultural studies, the book represents critical interdisciplinary scholarship at its best. Well researched, well written and delightful to read, it is a most welcome contribution to studies of Turkish modernity and national identity construction." * Sibel Bozdogan, Boston University, USA * "OEzge Calafato has written a ground-breaking study of photo history in Turkey and beyond, placing rarely seen vernacular photographs at the center of a farreaching analysis of the formation of the modern citizen in the new Turkish Republic. Through her extensive research and deft examination of a photo archive she assembled, Calafato demonstrates the value of often overlooked everyday photographs in understanding complex political and social transformations." * Nancy Micklewright, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian, USA * "A fascinating, highly-readable and enjoyable work on the early Turkish Republic that finally gives photography the attention it deserves... Calafato uses photography to demonstrate how Turkish citizens actively participated in the process of making a modern nation." * Hale Yilmaz, Southern Illinois University, USA * "Methodologically satisfying and empirically rich, this meticulously-researched study of the mass of everyday photographs demonstrates photography's integral role in the creation of modern identities. Carefully balanced between macro- and micro historical narratives, it reveals photography to be an incisive and indispensable prism through which to consider larger analytical questions around class, gender and modernity, ideology, politics and social change, not only in Turkey but in the wider historical landscape. Throughout the images, from photo albums to advertisements, are richly revealing of the hopes and desires that clustered around photographs in fast-changing society of the mid-twentieth century." * Elizabeth Edwards, De Montfort University, UK *