Photo 1058/14

Full-leather bound album measuring 323x420mm and containing 29 albumen prints. The album is lavishly bound with inlaid leather decoration in red and green and with the following inscription stamped in gilt on the front cover: 'Gift made by H.I.M. the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II. To the Library of the British Museum London 1893'. The same inscription, in Turkish, is found on the back cover. The prints themselves are laid down on the page within a decorative border, with captions in French and Turkish. The photographs show views of military academies and schools in the Istanbul area, with a number of portraits of students in uniform. There are 29 original photographs, plus four manuscript pages of statistics relating to the academies. The original views of buildings and portraits of students are signed on the mount (in Turkish) by the photographer known as Phébus Effendi (real name Bogos Tarkulyan). The photographic copies of architectural plans are uncredited. The three non photographic, statistical abstracts, ( photo 1058/14(30), photo 1058/14(31), photo 1058/14(32), photo 1058/30(33)) do not have an Ottoman-Turkish text, below the French text, as an explanatory note for the photograph.

Process = Albumen prints