Antoin Sevruguin

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Antoin Sevruguin, portrait
Signature of Antoine. Presumably, the e has been omitted in its official spelling due to the voice transmission and retransmission

Antoin Sevruguin ( Russian Антон Васильевич Севрюгин Anton Wassiljewitsch Sevrjugin ; * late 1830s in Tehran , Iran ; †  1933 there ) was a famous photographer in Iran at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century .

Antoin was the court photographer of the Qajars and at the same time the owner of one of the most successful studios in Tehran. His documentaries on society under the Qajars and the early Pahlavi dynasty are an important source for studying the history, cultural history and hierarchical elements of Iranian society at the time.

Life

Antoin Sevruguin was the son of the of Armenia coming Russian ambassador Vassil de Sevruguin and its Georgian born woman Achin Khanoum in Tehran. After a riding accident and the premature death of their father, the family moved to Georgia, where Antoin became interested in photography after finishing school and starting to study painting.

Interior view of the Golestan Palace , around 1860

Under the influence of the Russian photographer Dmitri Ivanovich Yermakov (1845–1916), who had already toured Iran, Crimea , Central Asia and the Caucasus , Antoin decided to travel through Iran for his part and to make a comprehensive inventory of the country. With his brother Kolia he first visited Āzarbāydschān in 1870 and from there to Kurdistan and Luristan .

In 1883 he and his brother founded a photo studio in what is now Firdawsi Avenue in Tehran. It was in the immediate vicinity of the constitutionally minded governor of Rasht , Zahir-al Dawla.

Antoin married the Iranian Armenian Louise Gourgenian, with whom he had seven children. With increasing success he attracted the interest of the upper class and was finally appointed to the court of Naser ad-Din Shah .

He was also noticed internationally. The German historian Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945) commissioned him with an expedition through the south and south-west of Iran to photograph Achaemenid and Sassanid rock tombs and monuments. He published this together with Ernst Herzfeld in 1910.

Antoin's studio was destroyed during the Constitutional Revolution . Of the original 7000 pictures, only 2000 were preserved, some of which were confiscated by Reza Shah Pahlavi in the course of his modernization measures. Antoin's daughter Mary later managed to recover some of the photos. A total of 696 glass negatives were preserved, which can be seen in the Smithsonian .

In 1933 Antoin died of a kidney infection and was buried in his family grave in Tehran.

Themes and style

In addition to a comprehensive historical and literary interest, Antoin Sevruguins devoted himself above all to Persian miniature painting , French impressionism and Rembrandt van Rijn's painting, whose use of light particularly fascinated him.

His photos were characterized by a style that is known in French as type and that essentially portrays different ethnic groups and their occupations . These informed those interested at home and abroad about regional costumes , regional handicrafts , religions and professions. In the form of postcards, these were sold as types persanes . Museums were also interested in Antoin's work, which provided a comprehensive picture of Iranian society and architecture at the time. Antoin Sevruguin often signed his pictures with a logo on the side of the picture.

Awards

Exhibitions

gallery

  • Persepolis

  • Man with falcon

  • Kurdish girls

  • Darvish

  • Street scene

  • In the countryside

literature

  • Iraj Afshar: Some remarks on the early history of photography in Iran . In: Edmund Bosworth, Carole Hillenbrand (eds.): Qajar Iran; political, social and cultural change, 1800-1925 . (Studies presented to Prof. LP Elwell-Sutton). University Press, Edinburgh 1983, ISBN 0-85224-459-2 , pp. 262-290.
  • Iraj Afshar: Ganjine-ye aks-hā-ye Irān hamrāh-e tārikhche-ye vorud-e akkāsi be Irān. A treasury of early Iranian photographs together with a concise account of how photography was first introduced in Iran . Nashr-e Farhang-e Iran, Tehran 1371/1992.
  • LA Ferydoun Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn, Gillian M. Vogelsang-Eastwood (eds.): Sevruguin's Iran = Irān az negāh-e Sevruguin . Late nineteenth century photographs of Iran from the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, the Netherlands . Barjesteh - Zaman, Tehran / Rotterdam 1378/1999, ISBN 964-90999-9-9 .
  • Frederick N. Bohrer (Ed.): Sevruguin and the Persian Image. Photographs of Iran. 1870-1930 . University of Washington Press et al., Washington, DC et al. 1999, ISBN 0-295-97845-7 .
  • Donna Stein: Three Photographic Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Iran . In: Muqarnas 6, 1989, ISSN  0732-2992 , pp. 112-130, JSTOR 1602285 .
  • Ulrike Krasberg: Sevrugian. Images of the Orient. Pictures of the Orient in Photographies and Paintings 1880-1980 . Societäts Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-7973-1122-1 .

Web links

Commons : Antoin Sevruguin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c SEVRUGUIN, ANTOIN . On July 20, 2003 from iranicaonline.org, accessed August 1, 2017
  2. ↑ a b c Antoin Sevruguin Photographs - A Finding Aid to his Photographs. asia.si.edu, archived from the original on January 9, 2004 ; accessed on August 1, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Corien JM Vuurman: Antoin Sevruguin (ca. 1840-1933). In: Sevruguin's Iran. geocities.com, archived from the original on October 16, 2002 ; accessed on August 1, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Yahya Zoka: Biography. In: History of Photography and pioneer photographers in Iran. geocities.com, 1997, archived from the original on August 25, 2004 ; accessed on August 1, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Sevruguin, Antoin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Севрюгин, Антон Васильевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iranian photographer
DATE OF BIRTH between 1835 and 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Tehran
DATE OF DEATH 1933
Place of death Tehran