Images of Women: the Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East, 1860-1950

296 Pages·1988·24.455 MB·English

by  Sarah Graham-Brown

The Portrayal of Women in Photography
of the Middle East 1860-1950
—
IMAGES OF
WOMEN
SARAH GRAHAM-BROWN
T
he portrayal of Middle Eastern women in the
West, particularly in the media, still relies
heavily on a number of well-worn cliches about
the 'exotic East': images drawing on Orientalist
visions of harems, veiling and seclusion, of
women as 'gilded prisoners' which reached the
height of popularity in the nineteenth century.
Images of Women examines how these Western
stereotypes of women in the Middle East were
shaped and perpetuated by photographs taken in
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by
commercial studios, travellers, missionaries and
anthropologists. Photographs of women taken by
Westerners are also contrasted with those taken or
commissioned by well-to-do Middle Eastern
families or individuals. At the same time Sarah
Graham-Brown analyses, in a series of
interconnected essays, the uses photographs may
have in documenting the largely hidden history of
women in the Middle East. The book focuses on
the areas in which both Western and indigenous
photography was most widespread: Egypt, Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Turkey and Iran, with
more limited reference to Iraq, Morocco, Yemen
and Arabia.
Photographs represent only one type of evidence,
sometimes problematic, of change and continuity
in women's lives at this time. They are set in a
wider political and social context by drawing on
written sources and oral histories to suggest the
variety of ways in which Middle Eastern societies
responded to socio-economic change, and how
Western political and cultural ideas were resisted
or internalized. This was a process in which the
status and image of women and womanhood often
played an important symbolic role. The book
stresses the diversity of responses from women
themselves and suggests that the popular images
of Middle Eastern women, either as passive
victims of a 'benighted' system or as symbols of
'modernity' and 'progress' are oversimplified.
Images of Women is a remarkably thorough social
history demonstrating how the introduction of the
camera to the Middle East helped at once to
illuminate and obscure the predicament of
women.

IMAGES OF
WOMEN
' >‘i ^et If
** t
■ »
^ 7
/’
/ ?
s - I
- iAj<
A-
The Portrayal of Women in Photography
of the Middle East 1860-1950
IMAGES OF
WOMEN
SARAH GRAHAM-BROWN
WITHDRAWN
BATES COLLM
library
New York
Columbia University Press
1988
Copyright © Sarah Graham-Brown 1988
All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
on request
ISBN 0-231-06826-3
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chronology
Introduction
Photography and Social History.
Visions of the Orient and Its Women in
Nineteenth-century Europe.
The Development of Anthropology and
Popular Ethnography. Women on Women.
The Impact of Political and Economic Change.
National Revival and the Role of Women.
I The Development of Photography in the
Middle East
Through Western Eyes: European
Photographers. The Development of the
Commercial Photography Market. Studio
Fantasies. Photography, Anthropology and
Ethnography. The Development of Indigenous
Photography. Power and Patriarchy: Women
as Subjects of Photography. Power and
Persuasion: Photographers and Their Female
Subjects.
II The Seen, the Unseen and the Imagined:
Private and Public Lives
Seclusion and Segregation. Hidden Away from
the World? The Camera and Women’s
Horizons.
III Family Portraits
Images of Marriage and Family Life. The
Kamil Family. Western Views of Middle
Eastern Families. Mothers and Children.
Family Memories. A Lebanese Woman’s
Journey. An Armenian Family.
IV Dressing the Part
Costume in an Era of Social and Economic
Change. Western Images of Veiling and
Exposure. States of Undress. The Politics of
Dress: Nationalism and Feminism. Removing
the Veil. Dressing Up.
V Working Women 144
Women and Agriculture. Divisions of Labour.
Work in the Village. A Weaving-song. Women
and Work in Urban Environments. Women
and Property. Crafts. Changing Roles for
Women in the Workforce. Women and the
Professions.
VI Women in the Public Eye 170
Women as Entertainers. Entertainers in the
Community. The Export of ‘Oriental Dance’.
Women and the Development of the Theatre
and Mass Media. The Changing Image of
Umm Kulthoum.
VII The Spread of Education 192
Attitudes to Women’s Education. The
Missionary Influence on Women’s Education.
Memories of a Catholic Education, Lebanon.
The Development of State Education. Higher
Education and the Educational Establishment.
The Education of a Woman Doctor.
VIII Campaigning Women 210
New Images. Challenging Authority: a Babi
Intellectual. The Development of Feminist
Ideas. Feminism and the State: Turkey and
Iran. ‘Independent’ Feminism: Egypt.
Feminism and Nationalism.
Afterword
Western Images. 239
Notes 252
Bibliography 260
Photographic Credits 266
Index 269