Pascal Sébah

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Back of a portrait photograph showing one of the highest decorations of the Ottoman Empire, the Osmanî Nişanı . Sultan Abd ul Aziz bestowed the Sébah award

Pascal Sébah (* 1823 in Istanbul ; † June 15, 1886 in Istanbul) was a leading photographer in the Ottoman Empire . He worked in what was then the capital, Constantinople , now Istanbul.

Life

The Sébah family came from the Levant and were of Arab-Christian origin, presumably they came from what is now Lebanon .

Sébah, born in Istanbul in 1823 to a Syrian father and an Armenian mother, opened his studio at 439 rue de Péra in 1857 - 'next to the Russian embassy', as he noted on the back of his portrait photographs. From 1860 he worked with a French technician, A. Laroche. From then on, he was responsible for the excellent print quality of the photographs. In 1873 a branch was opened in Cairo - 'on the Esbekieh next to the French embassy'. In 1883 Pascal Sébah suffered a stroke, which is why his brother Cosmi stepped in until his son Jean (Pascal) Sébah (1872–1947) was old enough to run the company. The French Policarpe Joaillier became a partner around 1884/1885 . From 1890 the company was called 'Sébah & Joaillier'. She was given the right to call herself the Sultan's photographer. Policarpe Joaillier returned to France around 1900 . From 1910 onwards, Jean Sébah worked with Hagop Iskender and, until 1914, with Leo Perpignani . From 1917 to 1918, 'Sébah & Joaillier' were partners in the first systematic project of recording and cataloging architectural monuments of all periods in Istanbul under the leadership of the German journalist and art historian Friedrich Schrader . Sébah and Iskender retired from the business in 1934. This was continued under the name 'Foto Sabah' until 1952. The branch in Cairo had already been closed in 1898.

Main facade of Istanbul Sirkeci station in a picture by Sébah & Joaillier
Turkish highway, signed Sébah & Joaillier

Pascal Sébah was next to the Armenian Abdullah Frères (Abdullah brothers) the most important professional photographer of his time in the Ottoman Empire. Another successful photographer in Constantinople during this period was the Greek Ottoman Vasilaki Kargopoulo . Europe's great interest in the exotic Orient created ideal conditions for selling photographs of sights, folkloric scenes, oriental costumes and the like to travelers . Through this activity Pascal Sébah became the documentarist of the time. His photographs were used, among other things, to illustrate scientific works on the Orient. He won medals at various world exhibitions, including a silver medal at the Paris World Exhibition in 1878 for his photographs of Egypt and Nubian desert tribes. Before that he had for the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna created a 370-page book on Turkish costumes, 'Les costumes populaires de la Turquie' (the traditional costumes of Turkey), for which he by the organizers in Vienna the gold medal and the then Sultan Abdulaziz one had received another medal. The order for this work had been given to him by the person responsible for the Ottoman department of the world exhibition, the painter Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910). For this he repeatedly photographed models with elaborate costumes, which Hamdi Bey then used for his famous oriental oil paintings.

In addition to the awards, his ten-part and approximately 2.5-meter-long panorama of Constantinople, which was captured from the Galata Tower , and his five-part panorama of Cairo made Sébah famous. His work is characterized by excellent compositions, good lighting and great care in detail and in the selection of his objects. When Michel Frizot's overview 'New History of Photography' says: "[...] On the other hand, the very productive Pascal Sebah, who had lived in Constantinople since the 1870s, showed how the quality of professional photography declined towards the end of the century" , so this remark probably refers to Pascal Sébah's son and the company 'Sébah & Joaillier'.

In 1877 the Ottoman government commissioned Sebah with the production of a series of photographs on which the so-called Russian atrocities against the Turkish population in the Eski Zagra province in Eastern Rumelia , now Bulgaria , were to be captured and prepared for Western eyes. The 31 photographs made available to the German government have been preserved in the Federal Foreign Office's archive to this day and were, among other things, the subject of a conference of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin in December 2010.

Works

  • 1873: Les costumes populaires de la Turquie , Istanbul.

further reading

  • Agfa-Foto-Historama in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum Museum Ludwig , Cologne. On the sweet shores of Asia: Egypt, Palestine, the Ottoman Empire. 19th Century Travel Destinations in Early Photographs , 1988.
  • Engin Çizgen: Photography in the Ottoman Empire: 1839-1919 . Istanbul 1995. ISBN 975-470-451-1 .
  • Roswitha Buchner: The image of Istanbul in the 19th century . Pera-Blätter No. 13, Orient Institute of DMG, Istanbul Department 1997.
  • Engin Özendes: From Sebah & Joaillier to Foto Sabah: Orientalism in Photography . Istanbul 1999. ISBN 975-080057-5 .
  • Friedrich Schrader: The art monuments of Constantinople : Der Neue Orient, 1919, Volume 5, pp. 302–304 and 352–354.

Web links

(all web links last accessed on September 21, 2014)

Commons : Pascal Sebah  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biography of Pascal Sébah in Gary Saretzky Photohistory
  2. ↑ Pascal Sébah at Sphinx Fine Art
  3. ^ FAZ of February 16, 2011 Page N4: Weak ban on images: Fatwa and photography among the Ottomans.
personal data
SURNAME Sébah, Pascal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Photographer and recognized chronicler of the Ottoman Empire
DATE OF BIRTH 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul
DATE OF DEATH June 15, 1886
Place of death Istanbul