Book Review: Turkey in Pictures
Turkey in Pictures, published in 1936 was meant to highlight the accomplishments of the “new” Turkish Republic under the leadership of Kamal Ataturk. The photographic album opens with a short introduction, written in Turkish, French, English, and German, that blames “Occidental colonization” for the demise of the Ottoman Empire. It goes on to praise the Turkish people for uniting their ancestral homeland against outside influences (namely western Europe). The dominance of Ataturk’s philosophy is clear as the text praises Kamalism as "the ideologic religion of the Turkish Republic.” The album includes 154 pages of sepia-toned photographs taken by the Austrian born photographer Othmar Pferschy. The book has the unusual feature of allowing for the insertion of additional pages. It is held together by two screws that can be loosened and removed to add more materials. The State Printing Press hired Pherschy in 1935 because they could not find a Turkish candidate with equivalent [Read more...]
