Meeting Register Page

Portraits of Unbelonging: Photography, the Ottoman State, and Armenians Leaving for America 1896-1908 by Dr. Zeynep Gürsel

"Portraits of Unbelonging" investigates the history of Armenian emigration from the Ottoman empire to the United States from the politically fraught and often violent 1890s to the end of Abdülhamid II's reign in 1909. Between 1896 and 1909, Ottoman Armenian subjects could emigrate legally only if they renounced their nationality and promised to never return to the empire. Having their photograph taken was a key step in the process. These photos recorded their severance from Ottoman nationality and became one of the first uses of photography to police borders anywhere in the world.

The goal of Portraits of Unbelonging is to link an Ottoman Armenian past to an American future to create a double-sided history of migration. Gürsel follows the stories of emigrant families over a century through official documents, ship manifests, and family photo albums. This involves traveling all around the United States - she's visited several Fresno families - to meet with descendants of those photographed and hear what became of the families first encountered in the Ottoman archives.

Dr. Zeynep Devrim Gürsel is a media anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She is the author of Image Brokers: Visualizing World News in the Age of Digital Circulation (Univ. of California Press, 2016) and the director of the ethnographic film Coffee Futures (2009).

Feb 25, 2021 07:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)