Abstract:

Despite the fact that in the present day they are almost erased from public memory, stereograph cards were the prototypical examples of virtual reality in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, especially in the United States and in several European countries. In the aforementioned period, a very wide range of stereographic images conveyed first-hand three dimensional visual information from all around the world to the Western countries. For the purpose of pinpointing how the Ottoman Empire, its people and culture were depicted and perceived immediately in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this paper will firstly provide the definitions of stereography, stereoscope and stereograph, and then it will concentrate on the stereograph cards which were issued in the United States, mainly by the Keystone View Company and Underwood & Underwood Stereograph Company, and will also examine the history and daily life of different Ottoman cities like İstanbul, İzmir and Thessaloniki which were portrayed in these photographs. In general, this article aims to demonstrate from which cultural and social perspectives the Ottoman Empire was portrayed to the American people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries via the primary form of virtual reality.

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