Ottoman History Podcast - Travel Images Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Episode 473 with Elisabeth Fraser hosted by Emily Neumeier For centuries, people have been documenting their travels with images, which purportedly function as visual evidence for someone��s experience far from home. This was no less the case for Europeans touring through Ottoman lands, who created a whole industry selling pictures from their time abroad. In this episode, Elisabeth Fraser explains how Western European artists at the turn of the eighteenth century began to create a new type of popular media, the illustrated travel volume. But these were not small guide books to tuck away in your pocket, they were large-scale luxury publications for the discerning armchair traveler. The enormous size and high production quality of these books and the accompanying images means that they were not the work of a single person but rather a large team of artists. Reflecting on these questions of authenticity, Dr. Fraser discusses how her research aims to take up a more nuanced view of the complexities of cross-cultural encounter. « Click for More »

When we go on social media, Facebook, Instagram, we know that the pictures people post are highly curated. What seem to be casual snapshots have been meticulously planned, down to the background, the lighting, people's clothes. And this is especially true for travel photos. And this is especially true for travel photos. People spend all this money and time to take a trip, and they want to document the journey, have something that can convey their experiences in places far from home. As it turns out, this is not a new phenomenon.

For centuries, people have been creating images of their travels for all the world to see. And this was no less the case for European artists touring throughout the Ottoman lands, who returned home and created a thriving new industry selling images of the East. This is the Ottoman History Podcast, and I'm Emily Neumeier. Elizabeth Fraser is Professor of Art History at the University of South Florida. In this episode, we discuss her book Mediterranean Encounters, Artists Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, 1774-1839. We talk about how Western European artists at the turn of the 18th century began to create a new type of popular

media, the illustrated travel volume. But these were not small guidebooks to tuck away in your pocket. They were large-scale luxury publications for the discerning armchair traveler. I think the smallest of anything I've looked at in this book is what's called folio size, which is a very large book, but some of them are several feet by several feet. The enormous size and high production quality of these books and the accompanying images means that they were not the work of a single person, but rather a large team of artists. team of artists. I think it presents really interesting interpretive issues, particularly for the kinds of readings that had been done of representations of, let's say, the East or the Orient, you know, because of the question of authorship, you know, who is the author, really, even if Choiseul-Gouffier is named as the author and claimed authorship, who made these perspectives, who made these images, who, you know, who writes the text? Because sometimes it's not Choiseul-Gouffier.

Reflecting on these questions of authenticity, Dr. Fraser explains how her research aims to take up a more nuanced view of the complexities of cross-cultural encounter. So I began to try to think about travel as a kind of process and a moment that has its own contingencies and place specificity and the kind of encounters that one has. The things that one can and cannot do in a place who determines those things and how that can affect, obviously, an artistic process. All this and more coming up. Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast. I'm glad to be here with you. We're thrilled. Your recent project, you're looking at travel images done by artists moving between Europe and the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to the early 19th century. When you say travel images, what is this body of material that you're looking at?

What is the nature of this material? Is it a painting on the wall? Is it a book? Are they sketches? Mostly I'm looking at illustrated books that have been produced. They are filled with prints for the most part. Most of the projects, the travel enterprises I'm looking at, are produced books with three volumes, almost always one, two, three volumes,

sometimes hundreds of prints per volume. Early on, we're looking at engravings mostly, and the medium changes over time as we get into the early 19th century lithography and other forms of engraving like steel engraving, and I think that plays a big role also in my discussion. I frame a lot of this with discussions, with comparisons of sketches at times or paintings, but the mass of what I'm

talking about is really illustrated travel books with prints in them. The big exception, of course, is the Delacroix chapter at the end where I'm talking about his sketchbooks. So I'm looking at original watercolors by and large in that case. So most of these books, how big are they? Are they books you can put in your pocket? Are they large display books? That's an excellent question because it really, I think, factors into how we have to consider them and really think about them as objects. Not only are they multiple, so unlike looking at, big easel painting in 19th century France, we're looking at many, many images. But the size of them is really stunning and very hard to convey in reproduction, very frustrating. I think the smallest of anything I've looked at in this book is what's called folio size, which is a very large book.

But some of them are several feet by several feet in size. Really enormous books. The Melling book that I discussed, for instance, can hardly be contained on a single table. It's so massive. So some of them are quite big. It's important to remember the scale of these books. How would they have generally been used? Where were they made? Where were the majority of these books published? Well, the ones that I'm looking at are mostly produced in France. France had a

huge publishing industry. And this was a kind of boom period for book illustration. Specifically, they had gobs of engravers, really skilled engravers who could do this kind of work. So most of them would have been produced in France, although there's always sort of counterfeit editions and things like that. They are luxury objects. Absolutely. They're extraordinarily expensive. They're very expensive to produce which is why a lot of them never get completed and have these sort of disaster stories behind them which are often quite amusing they are things that are produced in installments because it's so expensive for the artists to do it so they'll produce sets of prints maybe three four or even

ten at a time and those would be bought then by someone who has subscribed, usually, to the whole thing, and so it might take, you know, in some cases, you know, it might be 11, 12, 14, 15, 20 years, certainly for three volumes to be produced, you know, as in the case of Choiseul-Gouffier, 1782 to 1824, that was three volumes, and all of that's being produced in installments over that entire period. So the production costs itself are extraordinary. Just even the copper for the plates, the paper itself is extraordinarily expensive for those who are producing these things. And so, of course, that translates into

who buys them, right? On the other hand, they become such established publications that they are acquired then by libraries, and this is the period in which the public library comes into existence. So they become much more present than simply the elite audience of bibliophiles, right, which is their first target audience. But after that, people can see it for free and see books for free in other places. Plus, there are knockoffs, there's repetitions, there are counterfeits, as I said, produced in various languages. There are often octavo versions, which are smaller books with fewer illustrations usually that are produced for really famous pieces. So there's lots of ways in which it kind of filters down to a much broader audience over time. Would you say this is a new genre of literature in this time period, the late 18th century, or is there sort of a buildup to the sort of display,

prestige, illustrated travel texts? Yeah, no, that's a really good question. They definitely pre-exist. The late 18th century, you know, we can talk about travel books really from the 16th century, right? So the age of exploration kind of thing. And illustrated travel books, some really famous examples in 17th century France, for instance. But they become more numerous in the later 18th century. And why is that? That's a question I'm not sure is totally clear. There's a coming together of a lot of forces, the fact of the availability of artists, the fact that artists, in a lot of forces, the fact of the availability of artists, the fact that artists, in a lot of cases, I can think of my example of Casas, who's trying really

hard to make a name for himself, and he's kind of an underling, he's not a famous artist, he's not an oil painter, and he can use this medium as a way of kind of pushing his name forward, particularly once his patron is, not guillotined, but actually exiled, in his case, becomes an émigré. Another patron was guillotined, which is why I mentioned it. So there are a lot of artists who are using it as a way of making a reputation. Certainly by the early 19th century, it's a well-known way of kind of getting your work out and having a lot more control over things so that would be one you know one feature a lot of exploratory travels happening of course the

endless fascination with the ottomans in europe is another motor for this yeah big motor and a lot of these a lot of the case studies you're looking at in the book of illustrated travel volumes, these artists have diplomatic connections too, right? And so they're tied in with these diplomatic networks. So that obviously plays into geopolitics and the availability, the capacity to travel, to be asked to travel as an artist accompanying a diplomatic tour, as in the case of Delacroix or Choiseul Gouffier, with whom I begin, who is my first major travel enterprise. And he himself becomes the ambassador to Istanbul. So certainly the fact that there's an infrastructure there and a relationship, an embeddedness, one could even

say in the Ottoman Empire, allows some of the practical things to happen, right? A place to live, a way to eat, people who will translate things for you. But of course, it has larger implications in terms of cultural understanding and cultural contact, right, because of these diplomatic relationships and the fact that they have this kind of deep presence in Istanbul specifically, but all over the Ottoman Empire. So it strikes me that these illustrative books, unlike, say, a painting on the wall, you know, which has one artist, it's the painter, and that's it, you know which has one artist it's the painter and that's it you know eugene delacroix painted the death of sardanopoulos that's it but with these illustrative books um who's really uh are the artists usually also the authors of the text that accompanies these images um and you

also mentioned a whole class of engravers um like are these sort of class of people that are involved in making these books? Yeah, it's tremendously complicated and really, really fascinating. And so it varies, particularly in the early part of the period that I work on. It's still very much dominated by, you know, people of great wealth, and they are the people who organize the whole project. So my first, the first example is Choiseul Gouffier who was an aristocrat who could afford all this, who also sold tons of property in order to do it actually

as well. Oh really? Yeah. Very interesting archives for him in that case. I'm sure his descendants were really thrilled with that decision. It was all his wife's family's money too. Oh okay. The Marquis de Gouffier. So he organized it, but he paid researchers. He paid many, many engravers over all those years.

He paid artists to travel with him. He paid artists to travel without him. He paid people, you know, the great example of Consul Fovell, who lived in Athens, who collected objects, which were then reproduced for his book. is that there's a huge change in the publishing industry in France, a new law which allows people to retain the copyright of what they produce. And this helps the engravers. It also helps people who are called designers. And designers are those who make images from which the engravings are produced. And that allows a whole lot of artists to take more charge of the enterprises, of these massive travel enterprises, and also sort of claim authorship and claim also whatever proceeds come from them.

So then we have the case of Casas, the case of Melling, who lives in Istanbul for 20 years, almost 20 years, and then comes to France. He's not from France and produces a travel book in his own name as author, even though he would have been sort of the manager and kind of the designer, but certainly not engravers. It was a very, very complicated and difficult process and involved a lot of people. And I think we get a sense of that in your book. Maybe we could look at an image from the first chapter, Choiseul-Guffier. Maybe we could see one of the images and just actually just look at your caption. that's yeah that's an intriguing idea yeah let's see just a view of a theater at talmesus and the the artist is jean d'ambrun after jean

baptiste hilaire and it's an engraving plate 71 from choiseul guffier's book Voyage Picturesque de la Grèce. So Choiseul Guffier is the author. Yeah. And then it's an engraving in this published book. But what does it mean that Jean d'Ambrun after Jean-Baptiste Hilaire? What does that language indicate? Théard is the person who did the drawings in that case. And there's sometimes multiple engravers too, because there are different parts of the engra in that case and there's sometimes multiple engravers too because they're different parts of the engraving that are done by different people and things like that um yeah so and then there's a volume number and the plate number and you know so it gets it gets quite complex but this is what i think is really fascinating about travel uh books and

travel enterprises and it really intrigued me having come from working on since you mentioned the delacroix example right uh yeah because you've worked previously on delacroix extensively yeah yeah so so that was it's been a departure for you working on these these huge um images in part because of printmaking and you know having to master all of that but you know the book publishing industry is a whole nother kind of kettle. But also, I think it presents really interesting interpretive issues, particularly for the kinds of readings that had been done of representations of, let's say, the East or the Orient. Because of the question of authorship, who is the author, really, even if Choiseul Gouffier is named as the author and claimed authorship, who made these perspectives, who made these images, who, you know, who writes the text,

because sometimes it's not Choiseul Gouffier. Well, right. Yeah. Actually. It's really. Yeah. So that kind of complication, I think, really introduces some fascinating questions of interpretation.

And they struggle with it because right because whose representation is this of of the ottoman of the ottoman lands who's who's representing this because i mean i assume that these um artists that are listed in the particular this particular example like they didn't go no and and and and even if they did, there's the interpretation of the engraver after that. Right, so the person who did the drawings, Hillard, so he did not, he was not with Choiseul-Gouffier. He's sort of like, is he reading the text and getting an impression? It varies according to the particular work, but in this case, Hilaire did travel with him. But one looks at Hilaire's images and sometimes one detects an image one recognizes from something else.

If you see what I'm saying. So yes, he did travel and he did make sketches. We have almost nothing of his sketches uh original sketches and i don't know that they would be really telling because usually the sketches that do exist for these kinds of productions are designed sketches so in other words they're already made for the engraving in mind so so we don't get that kind of on the spot sort of thing but the big issue for interpreting these things has to do with the kind of discourse of authenticity around travel publications and the idea that the author must have experienced and must have witnessed what is seen. And so everyone works really hard to suppress the authorial complexity of these images. The reviewers do,

whoever's writing the text does, and there's always this sort of pretense that there's this one governing author. But once one looks closely at it, one realizes that's not the case. And certainly archival work kicks that up pretty quickly. I mean, we have in the case of Civil work kicks that up pretty quickly. I mean, we have in the case of Forbin, who I compare to Choiseul Gouffier, traveling in 1819. He actually is writing letters to people saying, oh, would you go for me over there? You know, go please visit this country. I don't have time to do it. Yeah.

And we'll work it out later. We'll, you know, we'll figure out how to kind of make it sound like me, essentially. He doesn't say that exactly. we'll figure out how to kind of make it sound like me, essentially. He doesn't say that exactly. So there's a certain, I might even say, a certain kind of anxiety about this kind of multiple authorship. And someone like Choiseul Gouffier, who is this very privileged person in French society,

clearly feels that he has no problem suppressing all these other voices. It's very interesting by the sort of early 19th century, society clearly feels that he has no problem suppressing all these other voices is very interesting by the sort of early 19th century people are already beginning to complain about that a little bit that he thinks that anything that anyone does for him any work that is done that he pays for is essentially his work right would you say that in in France at this time period that there was sort of an idea that there was a difference between an artist and designer as you put it? Yes, I mean there's certainly a great hierarchy and in some cases someone like Casas who uses this medium or genre as a way of kind

of gaining some kind of stature as an artist, he doesn't have many other possibilities open to him. He has not been trained as an oil painter doing history painting. He has been to the French Academy in Rome, but kind of as an honorary person, as a kind of guest. He certainly could never compete for the Rome Prize, right? So he's definitely not in the most sort of elite place among painters or artists in France.

But nonetheless, it's a way for him to gain a certain attention and stature. And it does give him various awards and prizes, recognition by the state, and things like this. Not quite what he hoped in the end, because Choiseul Gouffier comes back from exile and has the whole project stopped. Rude. Yes, it's quite awful. So in terms of the chronological framing of the project, you bracket your study with the years 1774 to 1839, study with the years 1774 to 1839. And you're using the dates of the rise of the rise of Abdulhamid I and the death of Mahmud II. So, these are Ottoman political events.

I think if someone just casually looking at the book title might assume that you're thinking about Hobsbawm's Age of Revolutions framework 1789 generally 1789 to 1849 which of course are based around French political events so by choosing that bracketing are you consciously referring to Hobsbawm or you're countering this particular perspective as you said a lot of the material is produced in France a lot of the artists originate from France so in what way are you sort of writing a counter narrative to Hobsbawm and referring to that that predominant framework yeah I don't think Hobsbsburg was not specifically on my mind, but it was a very pointed choice. So very much along the lines of kind of what you were suggesting, I was bound

and determined not to write a book that was reiterated that kind of European or Euro-centered perspective. Even now with a lot of writing on sort of transnational thinking and, you know, global history, histoire quasi, as the French say, one finds a lot of it is very firmly centered within a kind of European perspective. And I was really very it was very important to me to think about travel as a kind of transformative experience as an experience where people come into contact with each other and things are taken from both sides and things are shifted as people come into contact and I have seen people say that they're doing that and yet they continue to frame things in terms of, say, French dates or European dates. And I was really strongly trying to kind of

sort of get myself out of that and defy that. And of course, it's not completely arbitrary. Of course, the rise of Abdulhamid is what brings Choiseul Gouffier, sort of the kind of centerpiece of the beginning of the book, into contact with the next sultan, who will become the next sultan, Selim III, because he is kind of stuck in the palace, right, because he's the heir. And Choiseul becomes a good friend of his at that time. Choiseul becomes a good friend of his at that time. So it's connected closely to the kind of origins of the project itself, even though it's, again, a kind of an Ottoman French state, we might say, in that sense. In 1839, of course, yes, the death of Mahmud II and the origins of Tanzimat and all of that.

But of course, also a kind of shift from a European perspective because of the Balta-Limani Treaty and the English dominance of trade that kind of takes place at that moment. So again, it's a kind of European and Ottoman kind of takes place at that moment so again it's a kind of uh european and ottoman kind of cluster of dates uh the fine the final one yeah but you know so um in rewriting these trans-imperial cross-cultural exchanges between europe and the ottoman empire um i i i really feel like you're complicating you know just even these labels of french and ottoman um actors and in artwork and visual

culture um i feel like you're really problematizing those those kinds of firm labels in that vein why is it uh why is it useful to look at the case studies of um of melling and specifically melling and dosan i feel like uh as you as you've indicated have in previous scholarship been really kind of labeled as french or european artists but you you really kind of um make a case that um that's a case that it's a little more complicated than that. Yeah, yes, absolutely. Well, in the case of Melling, he has been just out and out dismissed. I mean, sort of the old Orientalist literature just sort of would take a single image, and famously it's the image of the harem and sort of say ah well this is

obviously a kind of orientalist kind of perspective but without really looking at the whole book or anything about Melling's trajectory Melling comes from a family in Lorraine which is not French not German lives in Germany as a child and actually born in Germany of a family from Lorraine, and goes to the Ottoman Empire when he's quite young, and sort of in that diplomatic milieu, works for Selim III's sister, works for Selim himself, and he's in Istanbul for nearly 20 years. And so I'm arguing that his book is produced when he leaves the Ottoman Empire, comes to France, again, even though he's not French, and produces his book, that he produces it

from the perspective of an Istanbul artist. And I actually, of course, argue that's could be seen as an ottoman court artist because he's working so so closely with the very uh you know the very top of the the empire with so what what kind of images are he is he producing um his images uh are mostly of waterways particularly the bosphorus which is a departure from the kinds of uh images one sees in travel literature previously, which tend to focus on historical monuments, sometimes pre-Ottoman, often a lot of Ottoman monuments, too. But he really jettisons that. He hardly focuses on anything like that at all. And mostly focuses, again, on the Bosphorus and on the palaces that are built along the Bosphorus and and I think that this is shows very clearly that he understands the political meaning of the Bosphorus

for the Sultan who is trying to create a kind of new culture of sultanic visibility along the Bosphorus to kind of compete with the nobles who are building quite lavishly themselves along the Bosphorus. So that is, I think, really significant. He shows in a lot of other ways that he knows a lot about Ottoman art. Like, for example? For example, his images very clearly look a lot like the mural paintings that are beginning to be painted at this time in the symbol in the time that he was living there in the late 18th century, and specifically begin to appear in the Imperial Palace. And these mural paintings

are usually of the Bosphorus and Bosphorus scenes of palaces and gardens. And not just in palaces, scenes of palaces and gardens and not just in palaces like most elite homes really had these images yeah like across the eastern mediterranean yes and not even just in istanbul but often of the bosphorus and yes even though they're not the homes might not themselves yeah i think our listeners probably would be aware of examples from birgi and turkey and um i've seen examples in cyprus and in nicosia um greece i've bulgaria all it's all it's it's pervasive yeah yeah damascus fascinating yeah so he takes up a subject matter that we recognize that is contemporaneous to his time and his symbol but it's also the way way he paints these scenes. There's a kind of lack of hierarchy, lack of focus, a kind of treating of the image as a series of horizontal zones, a kind of contour-heavy depiction, heavily detailed.

fiction, heavily detailed. So there's lots of other things that indicate that he's kind of absorbed an Ottoman visual culture, is what I argue. And so that's really important. Now, Dosen is a fascinating case, because of course, he is Ottoman born. He's Armenian. He comes from a family of dragoman, so interpreters. And he is then eventually employed by Sweden. He does Sweden proud. And so he eventually decides, for reasons we don't entirely understand, to produce a book about the Ottoman Empire, but in Paris, again, which seems to be a kind of center of book production, so would attract an Ottoman Armenian, you know, apparently,

to produce this book. And what's really fascinating is that he has been discussed quite a bit, because Ottomanists have always used his book for kinds of informational purposes or documentation. And what's the title of the book? It's the Tableau General de l'Empire Ottoman. So sort of the panorama, we might say, of the Ottoman Empire, right? And so he's quite well known in the literature, less well known in the Orientalist literature, although he makes a little bit of an appearance.

But Ottomanists have long used him. But no one has really kind of analyzed the book itself or not too much and kind of trying to understand the stakes in it and how it's produced. And the tendency has been to say that he is adopting a kind of French or European kind of enlightenment perspective in the way that he talks about the Ottomans. So he's talking about the Ottomans in France to obviously a European audience.

So is it kind of like a corrective text? Yeah. Oh, he's very clearly kind of, yes, kind of correcting what has been written in a lot of travel literature, particularly, and very, very clearly sort of taking up Choiseul Gouffier's example, using a lot of the same artists, the same engravers, same formats, same structures, same size, so that one cannot help but read his book in conjunction with Choiseul Gouffier's. So that's quite, and it's quite striking.

So there are very specific things that he will do or show that counter some of the kind of Orientalist imagery one does see in Choiseul-Gouffier of sort of, you know, you know, Annaman sitting around, you know, at leisure, you know, in great relaxation, right? So he's constantly stressing the work of Muslim culture, actually, and the importance of work and a work ethic is something that he stresses quite a bit. But what was really important to me is the fact that he makes a big deal out of using Ottoman images,

of which we have almost nothing. We have a few manuscript illustrations, paintings that we know he must have used copies from so we can make direct comparisons. And so there is this whole process of translation. We actually have Cochin who oversaw the engraving series talking about what it meant to look at these Ottoman images and transform them into French prints. And so my perspective on Dosen is that he is not simply adopting some kind of European perspective, but instead defending Ottoman culture at a time when it very much needed to be defended, right? So kind of right after 1774, the Russo-Ottoman War, you know, and appealing to, certainly appealing to a kind

of European culture, yes, in that defense, but also presenting Ottoman art and Ottoman culture, you know, the history of book production, for instance, in manuscript production, yeah, manuscript painting, but also books, because of Muta Farika, which he talks about quite a bit. manuscript painting, but also books because of Mouta Farika, which he talks about quite a bit. So he's sort of presenting this not in order to adopt the French mode, which of course people have assumed because it looks like Choiseul Gouffier's book. So he's becoming French or trying to be French. But I think the actual essence of what he's doing is the opposite. I mean, what's really interesting is that we have so many

different forms of translation in this book process and so depending on who was doing the engraving sometimes things end up looking very French. So in the case of the image of Adam and Eve taken from the 16th century manuscript, there's very little of the Islamic version of the story of Adam and Eve that ends up in the final engraving. So it becomes almost a kind of French version, a Christian version, we might say, of Adam and Eve. And in other cases, we know Cochin talked a lot about the fact that he really wanted to retain an Ottoman quality, and this is what I found particularly fascinating in the work. He said that there was something, it's a little condescending, but he said there was a naive authenticity to the Ottoman work and he didn't want to completely get rid of it and he didn't want to completely Frenchify the images, he says.

So he had them redrawn so that they were slightly changed, but he kept the feeling of some Ottoman original in them. he kept the feeling of some Ottoman original in them. And we can call this something I think that translation theorists talk about, which is markedness or a resistant translation. And that is a kind of translation that attempts to retain the feel of the original and doesn't attempt to kind of smooth it over into the translation language. So what I think becomes particularly interesting is that you can see all these varieties of approaches. So you become quite aware as you're looking through it.

And when I first encountered this book, I was fascinated because I could tell these were not French images. But I didn't know anything about it, how it was made, why. And the fact that there's so many varieties of images. Some of them look just absolutely 100% French. Adam and Eve, I think, is fairly French, but if we look at the picture of the Mehdi, this engraving looks so wholly French in its pictorial language that one cannot feel anything of a kind of

Ottoman original which Dosen claims was used for every single painting. So the feel of translatedness and the fact of varieties of translation, I think, means that as a viewer or reader, one becomes very strongly aware of this cultural encounter that happened for the artists making the book, and that you experience it yourself as a kind of cultural encounter, because you're watching these degrees of sort of Ottoman-ness and French-ness kind of being played out for you visually in the book. So in this book, the Tableau General, do they say explicitly in the book that we have looked at examples of Ottoman art and we are representing that here for you in these prints? Or is it more implicit? Well, Dosen himself says it.

Oh, okay. So it's explicit in the book. Yes, it's really important to him over and over again. And part of it is because he's playing the role of mediator. He's a dragoman. That's what he does. He mediates, right? He translates. And he's really giving himself this role. And he has to lay out, why do I have credentials to do this? Well, I'm using real Ottoman artists

and real Ottoman images. So these are authentic. These are true. These are real. So constantly kind of foregrounding that. So that's something you know. Visually, you see it, because there are these varieties of approachesing that. So that's something you know. Visually, you see it, you know,

because there are these varieties of approaches and images. There's something, again, very clear in some images. This is not, you know, a kind of French image of the late 18th century. And then we know from Cochin, we know that from his letters.

That's something you have to, that's behind the scenes. You're right, you wouldn't necessarily experience that. But otherwise, I think it's quite evident to someone, even without that kind of background information. In this project, where you explore travel images, you posit that these images are direct result of encounter and contact between artists moving around in Ottoman, in Ottoman spaces. How can we characterize the nature of this process of encounter and contact? And in what way way and how does this depart from perhaps previous

interpretations of this kind of images and i'm speaking i'm thinking specifically of orientalism um it's very much taken up uh in that framework yeah um i mean i think the main notion that people had dealt with when people talked about delacroix traveling, for instance, to North Africa, mostly Morocco, a tiny bit in Algeria, is that he was doing what Said called textual thinking, which he means that he came imbued with all of this knowledge that he had, perhaps knowledge in quotation marks, from reading texts, European texts, about, say, the Orient, and that he came with these preconceptions and he maintained the preconceptions throughout his travels and he went back to France with the same preconceptions

and nothing shifts and nothing changes. And actually the whole project for me started because I saw his travel notebooks, his sketches. That's when it started. I was working on my first book on Delacroix that had nothing to do with this particular topic. And I went to an exhibition and I saw those notebooks, those sketches, and I was really surprised by them. And that's where I began. They just looked so different from the kinds of things I knew Delacroix to do. They looked very different. He's done lots of, he did lots of travel. So there are lots of travel sketchbooks. I mean, France, England, for instance, various places in France,

you know, in the north as well, northern Europe. So one can compare them, and they are very different. There's a kind of hesitation, a tightness, an exactness that just doesn't look like Delacroix. And I thought, wow, this is really interesting. Maybe there's something that is specific, you know, to where he is, what he's doing, the engagement that he's having. And maybe we should take that seriously rather than sort of dismiss it. Because, of course, as we know, he goes back to France and makes images that we can read very easily using the old kind of orientalist language. So I began to try to think about travel as a kind of process and a moment that has its own contingencies and place specificity and the kind of encounters that one has, the things

that one can and cannot do in a place, who determines those things, and how that can affect, obviously, an artistic process. So we know, for instance, that Delacroix did not have much freedom in Morocco. He was not traveling to a place where the French had colonial control of any kind. He was traveling to the Moroccan Empire, which was a sovereign empire, right, run by a Moroccan sultan, headed by a sultan. And they determined, the hierarchy determined where he could be, when he could be there, how the French moved. He was with a diplomatic group, of course. They traveled under armed escort. They were made to, as they moved through the country, stay in camps well away from any towns or cities so that they would not have contact with certain people. So, you know, he wasn't a powerful person there and didn't have a lot of choices about what he could see and what he could paint. And obviously that's going to affect something. So that was kind of the inception of the project.

Certainly to question kind of this constant reiteration that sort of the European traveler or the European man or the white European man is always powerful everywhere, right? And sort of constantly imposing power on others. But there are times when there's an awful lot of uncertainty, and that was certain, that is definitely a case in this instance. And how do you see that in the sketches themselves? Well, there's things that he doesn't do. He does depict some women. He had access to Jewish women in particular, famously,

through his Jewish interpreter. But he depicts them very differently. This is, you know, an artist who depicted female models in a very sexualized way, but these images feel very distant, very remote, very chaste. but these images feel very distant, very remote, very chaste. There isn't that sort of sense, the sort of male gaze that one feels so strongly in so many of his other images of all kinds, right? You know, finished oil paintings as well as sketches, as well as drawings, quick drawings done, you know, in the studio, that kind of thing. So there's things that he doesn't do.

There's the kind of careful tightness of some of his drawings, where he really looks like he's kind of trying to gather artifacts in a way. And this is not an artist who works on the kind of discourse of authenticity, but he seems like he is there. It's almost sort of like he wants to get it right. So there's a kind of something that's not, again, confident, you know, like I can sort of see as I to get it right. So there's a kind of something that's not, again, confident, you know, like I can sort of see as I wish to see or impose as I wish to impose. Then there's a whole series of images

of thresholds and doorways. And they suggest a kind of outsiderness. They really articulate that kind of inside and outside. This would be inside, I'm not inside, I'm outside. So there's a kind of awareness of his outsider-ness that I think is very specific and really quite compelling. They're really, really interesting images. The section where we see that, I think he has really made the travel sketchbook into a kind of genre of painting. He's not just taking sketches, but he's actually making a series of images that kind of make sense of that genre. The sketchbook is a kind of series of pages that tell a story kind of in their own way. So it's quite visually compelling.

So in these examples you're talking about with Delacroix, I mean, these are sketches that he made while on the road. In the other case studies, you know, that you also explore in the book that we've been talking about, these illustrated books that are, you know, the final product of a long process of designing, mediating, translating. But even in these final products, do you and where do you see

these contradictions, these contingencies, this uncertainty of the encounters? Yeah, no, it's a really great question. I think the example of Dupre is really fascinating, because he was traveling at a point right before the Greek War of Independence. He's traveling largely in Greece, but also substantially in Istanbul. So this is Louis Dupre. He's an artist. He's an artist. So he's definitely an artist who's saying, I can make a travel book. He accompanies several Englishmen, affluent Englishmen, who say, come along and make some images for us. And then when he comes back to France, he's a Frenchman,

he makes images of what he did. So he's traveling right before the Greek War of Independence, when no one would have known that Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire was imminent. And his images tell us sort of one story. His text tells us another story. By the time he gets back to France, the War of Independence is well underway. It's a cause célèbre in France.

It's of great concern to artists and writers, among others. And he's really attached the whole project to Philhellenism and to kind of the support of the Greeks. This is sort of an after, this is after his trip, though. So he does his trip in 1819, and then the Greek War of Independence happens, 1821, 1822. And then it's his book, the final part is published when well he begins in 1825 1825 he begins in 1825 he finishes in 1839 by then he is actually dead poor man but um yeah so so so he is definitely the text says one thing the text is very philhellenic very anti-ottoman anti-turk as he would say, you know, the poor Greeks, you know,

but the images say something completely different, because the images introduce the full complexity of, you know, Ottoman society, the full complexity of this multi-ethnic society, and tell us about a large number of people with whom he had contact, often notables of various kinds, Greek notables, Armenian notables, Ali Pasha of Janina, of course, whom Europeans love to depict often in very negative ways. His are perhaps not quite so negative. very negative ways. His are perhaps not quite so negative. So he shows us kind of the whole kind of range of various kinds of people in power. And of course, they're not all what he could call Turk, right? And often they're very positive. He meets the governor of Athens and depicts him in a really sympathetic way, calls him his friend, actually, in the text there.

way, calls him his friend, actually, in the text there. And so we have this kind of real feeling of access to this society. And, you know, his images introduce the feeling of being close to people. We might look at actually the Greek in this case, the Logotetes. He's depicted in a way that really shows us from various visual devices he uses, we really feel the sense of closeness to this person. So his images are very, very striking that way. Even as he's clearly wanting to show us the costume of this figure, it's not a costume image because it's an individual. It's a portrait.

It's a portrait as well as a costume image. So it's sort of a merging of two kinds of images. And we have the powerful glance of this Greek figure. We have things like the shadowing around the objects objects uh even the puff of the smoke he says a water pipe things that really suggest a kind of temporality which really make one feel i am in the presence of this man at a very particular time right so this feeling that he is he was sitting in the room with this person yeah as he depicted them but i mean if it's you know but this isn't necessarily a contradiction right because this is a greek so like but also but as you said his depictions also

of you know the people he would have termed as turkish or ottoman right and are also are equally sympathetic yeah well i think what's important about the Greek, too, is that he is a notable. He is certainly what, you know, if we use the Philhellenic language, would have been termed an Orientalized Greek with his turban, with his kaftan, with his water pipe.

But he's also powerful. And, of course, the Philhellenic discourse is that the Greeks are oppressed and the Turks are the oppressors. So in that sense, it also defies that notion. But yeah, I would think the governor of Athens is a case. We just get an awful lot of complexity. We meet the Phenariots.

We meet, you know, the voivode of Moldavia, another very sympathetic image, which shows an Ottoman-appointed, powerful Greek. So we meet the Saraf, right, the Duzolu, the Duzian family, the Armenians who were also central to Ottoman power, right, in Istanbul. So sort of messing up the kind of clean lines of Philhellenism, I think. Yeah, yeah. And I have to say that I have, just because of the nature of my research, I've actually seen a few sketches that Dupre did during his journey. And I have to say, you know, the prints, as far as I can tell, are pretty faithful reproductions of the sketches that he did.

So there's not a lot of sort of editing of the images after the fact. So yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's always hard to know. They could already be arranged sort of images but uh yeah yes you're but that's yeah that's fair yeah but um yeah but just sort of the variety of individuals that's exactly i see what you mean um yeah yeah from the presence of albanians to his his uh grandchildren to veli pasha's page and you know a lot of these um and i mean what you're what you're pointing to of course is that um the sensitivity that uh identity and especially

in greece at this time uh was quite fluid in terms of you know turk versus uh turk versus greek versus muslim versus christian versus albanian albanian right who are you working for who defines what you do also venetian italian yeah you know um there's there's a lot of moving around these people also moved around quite a bit um yeah so i think you know that the the imagetext contradiction is what really allows us to see what contact produced, which was much more multiple and ambiguous and complicated, and what a kind of after-the-fact discourse imposed on that contact did to reinterpret it. That was beautiful. to reinterpret it. That was beautiful. Well, thank you so much for a fascinating look

at different kinds of visual culture of travel and encounter in the Ottoman Empire. It's been really fascinating. Thanks so much. Your questions were really great. So thank you for coming

on the podcast. That's it for another episode of the Ottoman History Podcast. You can find some of the images that we discussed today and much more on our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com. Thanks for listening, and until next time, take care. Thank you.