Abstract:

Orientalism, which has its origins from the Crusades, is the name of multi-faceted scientific studies conducted by Western researchers to recognize and understand the East. Collected on a regular basis, all kinds of visual and written texts relating to the East have constituted source for linguistics, sociology, ethnography, archeology, political science studies. In the extend of this study, the visual dimension of orientalism and its effect to contemporary photography is questioned. The structure of this paper is established by determining the historical development of orientalism and its relationship with the Turks. In order to indicate the effect of orientalism on painting and photography, the works of traveller painters and photographers which were produced within the Ottoman realm around the last quarter of the nineteeth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries are examined. As a result of this research, along with the pictures and photographs reflecting the reality, other works especially illustrating the harem life and imaginary in terms of its content that appeal fantasies have been identified as well. Pictures and photographs, covered with clichés related to harem life, are representing the orientalist point of view in artistic context. In contemporary art of photography, these visual templates are being re-annotated and reduplicated within the scope of of post-modernism

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