Toward Understanding the Photogenic New Citizen: Performance in Vernacular Photography from the Early Turkish Republic, 1920s–1940s

Abstract

This portfolio looks at photographic self-representations of Turkish citizens of a newly established nation-state from the 1920s until the 1940s. The article explores the ways in which modern Turkish women and men performed their interpretation of the photogenic in photographic self-representations and how these self-representations negotiated the Kemalists' idea of modern citizenship in the early republican era. The desired selves performed in vernacular photographs were influenced not only by the Kemalist revolution but also by class aspirations of the citizens and wider sociocultural developments of the time. In addition, this portfolio reveals some of the complex circulation networks for photographic exchanges, as also suggested by inscriptions produced at the time, contributing to a deeper understanding as to how people constructed their interpretation of the photographic.