Dr Nancy Micklewright is a historian of photograpy and fashion in the Ottoman Empire. Her latest book, Fashion in Late Ottoman Istanbul: Photography and Identity in a Global City, will appear in 2026. In this talk she focuses on the extensive writings by 19th-century British visitors to Ottoman harems in Istanbul and the ubiquitous depictions of the harem and of harem women. Travellers, photographers, Orientalist painters and Ottoman painters all produced images of the harem which range from the completely fictional to reasonably accurate depictions of Ottoman home life, and from the frankly erotic to gently romanticised views of Ottoman women. She examines this written and visual material in the context of Ottoman and international debates about slavery and the institution of the harem more generally, providing a picture of enslavement in Ottoman harems different from that derived from archival documents such as inheritance registers or other court records.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
