A Borrowed Gaze: Antoin Sevruguin’s Photographs in Ivar Lassy’s Behind Lattice and Veil (1917)

Abstract

The paper analyzes the use of late 19th – early 20th century photographs by Antoin Sevruguin in the paperback edition by Helsinki-based author Ivar Lassy Behind Lattice and Veil (Helsinki, Otago, 1917). Photographer Antoin Sevruguin, originally Russian, lived and worked in Tehran from late 1860s up until his death in 1933. A generalized picture of a Persian woman is among the most common motifs of photographs that had been bought from Sevruguin studio by travelers and researchers alike, and eventually landed in the West. This paper looks closer at the re-contextualization of Sevruguin’s images in Lassy’s book as an example of adaptation of photographs as means of cultural representation by both popular and scientific discourse of the Orient.