
Ottoman-Era Photographs Take on New Meaning in Their Digital Life (2018) - prismatic
https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/ottoman-era-photographs-take-on-new-meaning-in-their-digital-life/
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Upvoter33
To whomever posted this, thank you. My father was from Turkey, and he often
spoke longingly of his homeland. The images included here were transporting. I
only wish he were still around so that I could sit there and thumb through
them with him.

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ChuvoniRobisi
If you haven't gone before, you must visit!

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onetimemanytime
For those that don't know, Turkey (Ottoman Empire) ruled for over 600 years
over a very large empire.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire)
Quite a few times they tried taking over proper Europe, like Italy (Pope was
there) and Austria. They ruled the Balkans, Northern Africa, Saudi Arabia,
Caucasus etc etc. They didn't invest anything in occupied areas but didn't
_directly_ force conversions to Islam. Conversions had a lot of benefits of
course so quite a few people did over the centuries.

Eventually Russia and European powers did them in, empire was rotting for
centuries...

(Turkey's Erdogan is now trying to be the Sunni leader, only to be opposed by
Saudi Arabia, which was pwnd by the Turks for centuries.)

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coldtea
> _but didn 't directly force conversions to Islam_

Well, not for the general population. But they did it lots of times...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissaries)

"They began as an elite corps of slaves made up of kidnapped young Christian
boys who were converted to Islam"

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vertline3
Also I think there was an extra tax for other abrahamic, and if you married
into you had to convert.

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twic
I was surprised to see an enormous sign saying YORKSHIRE, although i suppose
if a Yorkshireman put up a sign it would hardly be a small one. Having
squinted at the pixels, i think it was probably an advert, or an office sign,
for an insurance company:

[https://heritage.aviva.com/our-
history/companies/y/yorkshire...](https://heritage.aviva.com/our-
history/companies/y/yorkshire-insurance-company-ltd/)

There's another sign for an insurance company, Aachen & Munich, below it.

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m00dy
Latin labels on the buildings are very interesting. Because, we switched to
latin in 1928.

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thewarpaint
You mean to the Latin alphabet from the Arabic one, right?

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billfruit
Is the full set of images available for viewing online by the general public
or only for "Experts"?

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rz2k
From the comments to the article:

> Annelisa Stephan on December 18, 2018 at 12:07 pm

> You can browse all the photos at the following link:
> [http://primo.getty.edu/GRI:GETTY_ALMA21118428440001551](http://primo.getty.edu/GRI:GETTY_ALMA21118428440001551)

> Click the links to the right of the screen reading “Connect to digitized
> images of…” to browse the various series. From there, select an item by
> clicking the blue title link. Once you are in a record for an individual
> image or album, click the thumbnail image to the right of the screen to see
> it larger and, in the case of albums, page through the contents.

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billfruit
Very easy to miss seeing the image thumbnail, it appears on the extreme right,
and if you don't scroll horizontally, not visible.

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soperj
Even with that description, I can't find it.

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mnw21cam
Could someone who has actually bothered to read the article (unlike me)
elucidate in what way the photographs have changed in meaning? Thanks.

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simonh
One way is through changes in context, by organizing them by origin and theme
so that they contribute to a larger narrative. Another is through enriching
them with metadata that would not be obvious from simply looking at the image.

