The Photograph-Albums of the Golestan Palace - A Window on to the Social History of Iran during the Qajar Era

There are 1040 photograph albums containing nearly 42500 photographs housed at the Golestan Palace Photo-Archive today. It appears that these albums have reached us today more or less intact, since the days they were compiled during the mid nineteenth to early twentieth century in the inner sanctum of the Qajar royal house. One hundred and sixteen shadow albums (containing nearly 5000 photographs) have been made available for public viewing. Methodological approaches to the use of historical photographs in the form of collections and large visual databanks as source material in the study of social history is the area of interest of the authors. In this quest the Qajar photo-albums act as a case in study. This article does not aim to expound upon the details of the ground breaking events that have marked Iranian history of photography. It focuses on the photo-albums compiled by court photographers that were housed in the Golestan Palace Ālbomkhāne-ye saltanati (The Royal Album House). Individual photographs have been addressed by various scholars at large and the albums have received preliminary attention. They have not yet been examined systematically as a whole or within a socio-historical context. This void has not been due to lack of interest of the photo-historians. It has been in the most part due to the desperate state of the albums and the overall Qajar photography heritage housed in the Golestan Palace, which had received minimal care until recently. Although we can state with confidence that the selection made available to the public is thematically representative of the overall collection, no definite statement about the germinal activities that lead to what became an indigenous style of Iranian photography can be made until scholars receive the chance to examine the total treasure locked behind closed doors. As such the findings of this article, with its examination of 116 albums out of a pool of 1040 must be viewed as a window that has been opened onto a vast heritage. Many of the photographs of the Tholozan collection can also be found in the Golestan archive. The methodology concepts expounded will be applied to that of the Tholozan collection as well.