Making the Modern Turkish Citizen : Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era

"Featuring over 100 colour images, this book explores the photographic self-representations of the urban middle classes in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining the relationship between photography and gender, body, space as well as materiality and language, its six chapters explore how the production and circulation of vernacular photographs contributed to the making of the modern Turkish citizen in the formative years of the Turkish Republic, when nation-building, secularization and modernization reforms took centre stage. Based on an extensive photographic archive, the book shows that individuals actively reproduced, circulated and negotiated the ideal citizen-image imposed by the Kemalist regime, reflecting not only state-imposed directives but also their class aspirations and other, wider social and cultural developments of the period, from Western fashion trends and movies to the increasing availability of modern consumer items. Calafato also reveals that the freedom from state control afforded by personal cameras allowed the desired image to be sometimes tweaked by incorporating elements from Ottoman and Turkic traditions, by pushing the boundaries of gender norms or by introducing playfulness. Making the Modern Turkish Citizen offers a valuable portrait of the ongoing political and social changes on the lives of the Turkish middle class, and of how they saw and wanted to present themselves, privately and publicly."-- From publisher's webs Cover 1 Contents 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 14 Identity and Nation-Building in the Early Republican Era 20 Corpus Selection and Approach 29 Theoretical Framework 31 Chapter Outline 38 Part I Photography, Gender, and Modernity 42 Chapter 1 The Construction of the New Turkish Woman 48 From Subjects to Citizens: Creating the Modern Turkish Woman 49 Women in the Public Sphere 55 Unresolved Femininity: The Case of a Beauty Queen 63 Reading Gender 69 Conclusion 73 Chapter 2 Modern Turkish Masculinities 76 The Joyful Soldier 77 The Gentleman 85 The Modern Husband, the Modern Father 90 Modern Forms of Gender Play 102 Conclusion 106 Part II The Making of the Modern Body 108 Chapter 3 Pose, Posture, and Props as Worldmaking 110 Modernizing the Pose: From the Ottoman Empire to the Republic 112 Playing with the Pose 119 Conclusion 124 Chapter 4The Bodies of the Republic 126 Sports Photographs: A New Republican Corporeal Aesthetic 127 Educating Bodies: 19 May Celebrations 131 Framing Turkish Womanhood and Manhood: Lohusa and Sünnet 134 Conclusion 138 Part III Photography and Space-Making 140 Chapter 5 Photography’s Domestication 142 Photography, Urban Memory, and Nation-Building: Izmir’s Hamza Rüstem Studio 146 Democratizing the Studio Space: Alaminüt Photography 152 Conclusion 159 Part IV Photography, Materiality, and Language 162 Chapter 6 Disseminating Citizenship 164 The Curious Case of Şükrü Bey 164 Circulating Memory through Photographs 173 Candid, Cordial, and Courteous: Captions for Lifeless Shadows 178 Conclusion 186 Conclusion 188 Notes 194 References 215 Index 240 "Featuring over 100 colour images, this book explores the photographic self-representations of the urban middle classes in Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s. Examining the relationship between photography and gender, body, space as well as materiality and language, its six chapters explore how the production and circulation of vernacular photographs contributed to the making of the modern Turkish citizen in the formative years of the Turkish Republic, when nation-building, secularization and modernization reforms took centre stage. Based on an extensive photographic archive, the book shows that individuals actively reproduced, circulated and negotiated the ideal citizen-image imposed by the Kemalist regime, reflecting not only state-imposed directives but also their class aspirations and other, wider social and cultural developments of the period, from Western fashion trends and movies to the increasing availability of modern consumer items. Calafato also reveals that the freedom from state control afforded by personal cameras allowed the desired image to be sometimes tweaked by incorporating elements from Ottoman and Turkic traditions, by pushing the boundaries of gender norms or by introducing playfulness. Making the Modern Turkish Citizen offers a valuable portrait of the ongoing political and social changes on the lives of the Turkish middle class, and of how they saw and wanted to present themselves, privately and publicly"-- Provided by publisher