Category Archives: Orientalist Images

An Orientalist Coverup: Imagine that…

Books You Should Read, Morocco, Orientalism, Orientalist Images, Photography


Cover of Milet’s book

In the Islamic Arts Museum in Qatar last December I bought a copy of a fascinating book of Orientalist Photographs by Éric Milet, who has worked as a tourist guide in Morocco for a number of years. The photographs, from both the 19th and 20th centuries, are accompanied by short vignettes. As Milet notes, “The ‘Oriental’ Maghreb was born in the darkrooms of Western photographers. A land of contrasts, revealed to the public at large by men and women who were delighted to have crossed to the ‘other side’ in their own lifetimes, constantly evoking the delights of this earthly paradise.” The book is well worth owning, not only to decorate your coffee table, but for easy, entertaining and informative reading.

As the author Malek Alloula has written, in his The Colonial Harem (1988), the ‘Oriental’ created by the photographer became “the oriental’ for the general public. The photographic lens is portrayed by Alloula as the structural enemy of the veil; capturing the image thus sought the removal of the veil and exposure of the female body as a voyeuristic object. Of course, the photographers who paid prostitutes to pose as “typical scenes” in the Maghreb were not the prudish Orientalist scholars, who would often render sexual argot in pseudo-scientific Latin (perhaps assuming that Victorian ladies did not know their Latin or at least that kind of vulgar Latin). But in the case of Milet’s book, the cover is a modern-day coverup that allows it to be sold in the likes of a bookstore of an Islamic Museum. The picture chosen for the cover has been altered so that the bare breast exposed by the photographer in this exquisite 1910 image (shown below) is lost in an arabesque and nipple-less swirl.


“Young Woman in Arab Costume, Algeria, 1910

The objectification of the female body, as shown by Alloula and many others, reinforced the image of the exotic and erotic harem girl open to the gaze of the European voyeur. True enough, although photographers of the time would expose the female body no matter what the nationality. Artistic nudes graced the major museums and were admired; the emerging visual realm of photographs quickly elided the erotic into the pornographic. But in the case of Milet’s book, undoubtedly due to the publisher rather than the author, there is a reversal, a kind of commercially smart prudery that removes the apparently offending body part, even though in so doing the very exposure for which such Orientalist photographs are critiqued is erased. It is not unlike sanitizing the Arabian Nights as children’s fairy tales.

In this case I am not suggesting we judge a book by its cover, but that we allow ourselves to be seduced into opening the book to see the range of images, some clearly bordering on the exploitative and others evincing a sensitivity usually reserved for poets.

Daniel Martin Varisco

Tabsir Redux: With Kitto Illustrating Bible History

Bible and Holy Land, Lithographs, Orientalism, Orientalist Images

As a child I spent many inquisitive hours leafing through the books in my grandmother’s parlor bookcase. One that especially attracted my attention was John Kitto’s An Illustrated History of the Holy Bible (Social Circle, Georgia: E. Nebhut, 1871). Rev. John Kitto, recognized on the title page as author of the London Pictorial Bible, the Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, ETC, ETC, retells the entire history of the Old and New Testament, from creation to the destruction of Jerusalem. Kitto was born into poverty in 1804 in Plymouth, England and due to an unfortunate accident ate age thirteen became entirely deaf and was forced into the poor house at the age of fifteen. This is quite an inauspicious beginning for a waif who went on to be a respected theological scholar. Through the local humanitarian efforts of several men in Plymouth, Kitto became a lay missionary to Malta and then for three and a half years in Baghdad. “While residing in that city,” writes Alvan Bond in the preface to Kitto’s book, Cairo “was visited by the plague, the terrific ravages of which swept off more than one-half the inhabitants in two months. Amidst this fearful desolation he remained calm and active at his post.” Once back in England he married and produced a travel account and several pictorial histories of the Holy Land. In 1844 the University of Giessen conferred upon him the degree of D.D. His ill health forced him to seek help in the spas of Germany, where he died after a mere half century in 1854. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: With Kitto Illustrating Bible History →

Old World Travel 90 years on: #5 The Soul of India

India, Orientalist Images


“The Jama Masjid at Delhi, India. This is India’s greatest mosque and is the second largest in the world. It was built by Shah Jehan in the first part of the seventeenth century and possessed a sacred relic, a hair from the beard of the prophet. The illustration shows a crowd in the court and which is 325 feet square, dispersing after meeting at prayers.”

Exactly 90 years ago a four-volume set of encyclopedia-like human interest books was published as The Human Interest Library: Visualized Knowledge by Midland Press in Chicago. In a previous post I commented on its thoroughly “Orientalist” flavor. The section on “The Ancient Empire of the Moguls” covers mainly the exotic cultural diversity of India. Few countries have been exoticized more than India, and this Cyclopedia is not exception:

How may be described this soul of India: It is something shy, timorous, wistful and appealing. It does not greet you with the rugged strength and boisterous self-confidence of Dover Cliff, or with the passionate sweetness of Italian hills, or with the sunburnt cheerfulness of France. It creeps towards you like a spaniel that fears to be scolded and hopes to be caressed. Continue reading Old World Travel 90 years on: #5 The Soul of India →

Old World Travel 90 years on: #4 Cheops’ Anthill

Archaeology and Antiquities, Egypt, Orientalist Images


Exactly 90 years ago a four-volume set of encyclopedia-like human interest books was published as The Human Interest Library: Visualized Knowledge by Midland Press in Chicago. In a previous post I commented on its thoroughly “Orientalist” flavor. The section on Egypt covers mainly the archaeological history with only a few brief comments on the then contemporary state of Egypt. One of the great mysteries over the years has been an explanation for how the massive pyramids were built. Here is a novel idea, if a picture is worth a thousand scholarly words: ants.

On Mahometism, 1833 style: #2

Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Lithographs, Muhammad, Orientalist Images


A History of the Church, p. 95

One of the books owned by a great, great aunt of mine in Cleveland was A History of the Church, etc., published in 1833. In a previous post, I offered some excerpts from its coverage of “Mahometanism.” The author is a certain C. A. Goodrich, who is decidedly Protestant and as unfriendly to Roman Catholicism as he is to Islam and Hinduism. Near the end of the book is a section entitled “The Story of the World” by Josiah Conder, originally published in the Missionary Annual for 1833. Its comments on the various religions, including Islam, is quite fascinating, again as a reflection of a time when the United States was barely half a century old. Continue reading On Mahometism, 1833 style: #2 →

On Mahometanism, 1833 style

Islam and Christianity, Islamic Sects, Islamophobia, Lithographs, Muhammad, Orientalism, Orientalist Images, Wahhabi


One of the books owned by a great, great aunt of mine in Cleveland was A History of the Church, etc., published in 1833. The bottom of the frontispiece is torn, so I do not know the publisher, although I suspect it was printed in Boston. It is a general history of Christianity with extended comments on other religions, including “Mahometanism.” The author is a certain C. A. Goodrich, who is decidedly Protestant and as unfriendly to Roman Catholicism as he is to Islam and Hinduism. Several parts of the text, which stretches a robust 504 pages, deal with Islam and are interesting for the biased perspective of the time. The history of the Church is according to periods, and Period V is labeled “The Rise of Mahometanism” (at the top of the pages of the chapter); the longer title is “The Period of the Rise of the Mahometan Imposture will extend from the establishment of the supremacy of the Roman Pontiffs, A.D. 606, to the first Crusade, A. D. 1095.” Period VI covers the Crusades, followed by the Reformation and then a very long chapter on the Puritans.

At the start of the section is a small lithograph of Muhammad, mounted on a steed with a sword in hand. Some of the information is descriptive; some even praises Muhammad, but it is clear that the author despises Islam as the excerpts below well show:


A History of the Church, 1833, p. 96

Continue reading On Mahometanism, 1833 style →

Orientalist Images #3: Oil as a Happy Thought

Literature, Orientalist Images



[With this post I continue a series dedicated to photographs in an “Orientalist” mode. In addition to Reading Orientalism (which is also the title of my last book), the creation of an imagined Orient is very much a pictorial voyeuristic voyage. In this series I focus on Western images of the Middle East and North Africa, both those that perpetuate stereotypes and those that chip away at the bias. Readers of the blog are welcome to send in images they have found and want to share.]

I continue with images from a 1933 edition of Richards Cyclopedia, with 24 volumes published in New York by J. A. Richards, Inc and edited by Ernest Hunter Wright and Mary Heritage Wright. This is an unusual encyclopedia, arranged by topics in a more or less arbitrary order but replete with images. One of the articles is called “The Mtchless Story-Teller” (vol 18, pp. 4433-4448) and retells several of the more famous tales from the Arabian Nights. In the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves the plot to learn the secret of the cave from Ali Baba unfolds with a slave girl named Morgiana pouring hot oil in the vats where a number of robbers were hiding. But the reader is assured in the caption that it was a “happy thought” to so dispense with the troublemakers. Ah, how Orientalist to assume this part of the world has oil to burn…

to be continued