Daylight After a Century: Dr. George Djerdjian's Collection of Photographs of Pre-1915 Ottoman Life in Eastern Anatolia

By George Jerjian

Dr. George Djerdjian (1870-1947), grandfather of the writer, took 240 photographs of his hometown of Arabkir and his college town of Erzeroum between 1900 and 1907, of which only about 100 survive. These photographs capture the way of life of a people that within a decade would become extinct in Anatolia, their homeland for over 3,000 years. The photographs are varied and have been arranged under separate headings such as water, land, people, churches, schools, economic life, social life, and political life. For over a century, these photographs were stored in a grey steel box, which migrated from Arabkir to Alexandria, Egypt, where it stayed for almost 50 years. Then it moved with descendants to Khartoum, Sudan, where it stayed for 20 years, then onto London, England for 30 years, and then to Washington DC for about 10 years.

Now this collection of photographs has finally been exposed to daylight after a century of darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499080254

George Jerjian

George Jerjian is a Chartered Marketer, writer and speaker. For more information, please visit www.georgejerjian.com

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by George Jerjian.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-8026-1

                Softcover        978-1-4990-8024-7

                eBook             978-1-4990-8025-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Conversion, restoration, and production of digital and hard copy prints of glass lantern slides and glass plates completed by Chicago Albumen Works, Housatonic, MA 01236, USA.

Maps designed by Eric van Lauwe, Paris, France

Rev. date: 10/16/2014

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CONTENTS

Preface

Maps

1. Water

2. Land

3. People

4. Churches

5. Schools

6. Economic Life

7. Political Life

8. Social Life

9. The Photographer

10. The Field Camera & Report

Acknowledgments

About The Writer

To the homeless, powerless, and voiceless.

But our citizenship (homeland) is in heaven, and it is from

there that we are expecting our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 3:20.

PREFACE

Introduction

In the year 2015, the world commemorates the centennial of the First World War, the Australians and New Zealanders commemorate the centennial of the ANZAC landings on the peninsula at Gallipoli, in Turkey, and the Armenians, across the world, commemorate the centennial of the Armenian genocide.

It is only through luck or providence that the photographs in this book survived the cataclysm of the First World War. They show us a world that was extinguished before that Great War had ended. My grandfather, Dr. George Djerdjian¹, a college teacher of general science, and familiar with the necessary chemicals needed for developing film, photographed the people and places of his hometown and his college city. This small piece of history should never have survived the following 100 years; by all the laws of chance and probability, they should have been broken, lost or misplaced.

The photographs

These 100