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[TURKEY - ISTANBUL] [Original Large Ten Part Albumen Photograph Panorama of Istanbul, Titled:] Panorama de Constantinople pris de la Tour de Galata, par Sebah & Joailler [i.e. Panorama of Constantinople Taken from the Galata Tower]

Sebah & Joailler Studio

Item #409

Ca. 1890s. Original publisher’s full cloth album with elaborate gilt tooled decorative borders on both boards and gilt lettered title on the front board. Album slightly rubbed, front cover slightly soiled, panorama with some mild foxing in places, but overall a very good strong panorama. Impressive ten-part albumen photograph of Constantinople dissected and mounted on the card stock album leaves put together in accordion-like manner, ca. 24,5x335 cm, each part is ca. 24,5x33,5 cm.

Famous panorama of Istanbul taken by the Ottoman Sultan’s official photographers – the studio of Jean Sebah (1872-1947) and Polycarpe Joailler (1848-1904). This stunning panorama taken from one of the most known landmarks of Istanbul – the Galata Tower – gives a wide prospective of the densely built city, on both shores of the Strait of Bosphorus and the Inlet of Golden Horn, showing the Old and New Galata Bridges, the Seraglio Point with the Topkapi Palace, the building of the Ottoman Bank building (constructed in 1890-1892), Hagia Sophia, the Süleymaniye Mosque and other sites of Istanbul’s historic peninsula.

‘‘The Constantinople-based photographic studio Sebah & Joaillier – formed from a partnership between Joannes (Jean) Pascal Sebah and Policarpe Joaillier which dates only from 1890, but from its establishment, took over the marketing of the catalogue of fine images produced in Turkey and Egypt by Pascal Sebah. Sebah operated a studio in Constantinople from the 1860s, and also worked in Egypt from 1873. The same images, therefore, have been marketed by the studio at various times as being the work of P. Sebah, J.P. Sebah, or Sebah & Joaillier. Following Pascal Sebah’s death in 1886, the Turkish studio was operated by his brother Cosimi for a time, who also trained Pascal’s son in the art of photography. Joannes, known as Jean, reputedly joined the business aged 16, took it over at aged 18, and immediately entered into a partnership with Policarpe Joaillier. Joaillier returned to France in 1910, but with subsequent partners, Jean Sebah remained actively involved with the studio until 1943. From the 1870s, Sebah, and later Sebah and Joaillier, were major subjects of evocative imagery to the increasing number of people who undertook the Victorian Grand Tour.

Their studio images of Egyptians and Nubians in ‘traditional’ costumes and undertaking ‘traditional’ tasks were highly popular, and indeed had been Pascal Sebah’s Les Costumes Popularies de la Turquie published to critical acclaim in 1873’’ (Hannavy, J., ed. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography. Vol. 1, New York, 2008, p. 1261). The studio became the official photographers of the Ottoman Sultan in 1899.

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