As Assistant Director of the Akkasah Center for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi between 2014 and 2020, Özge not only added more than 17,000 photographs to the institution’s collection, she also sought to “activate” this vast archive. Dating from the 1920s and 1930s, the photographs were acquired from second-hand book dealers in Istanbul and Izmir. They were the work of studio-based photographers and more itinerant alaminüt photographers. In these “everyday” photographs we see sitters constructing and expressing their social and class identities, while negotiating with the state’s aim to establish a new Turkish identity. In this conversation, recorded on 9 December 2024, Enno and Julia ask Özge about her new book, Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era. They discuss how the photographers understood their own art and craft, as well as the way in which alaminüt photographers became associated with spaces such as parks and beaches, republican spaces in which regional characteristics influenced nation-building processes.

By fostering a new social imagery, these photographs reflect the Treaty of Lausanne’s broader impact on the construction of a new Turkish national identity.

Episode 71 – Developing the Nation

Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.

FEATURE IMAGE: BELLOWS PLATE CAMERA, WITH A DALLMEYER 3.B PATENT LENS, C. 1900. SCIENCE MUSEUM GROUP, Y1978/51.