Ronald Graham in 19th c. Persia: Rugs and Textiles in his Photo Album Lecture by Jeff Spurr October 21, 2007 Some pictures click on the thumbnail for the full picture. Jeff Spurr Ronald Graham in 19th c. Persia: Rugs and Textiles in his Photo Album Ronald William Graham, fresh from his first diplomatic posting in Paris, arrived in Tehran in 1897 at age 27, carrying a Kodak camera in his luggage. He stayed just over two years and composed an extensive visual record of his experience only after leaving: a photograph album inscribed “Persia 1897-1899 R.G.,” comprising no fewer than 422 photographs, alongside eight watercolors and two racing programs. It represents one man’s response to a novel environment and to the uses he could imagine for the various photographic formats available to him in the first decade after the portable, point-and-shoot camera became widely accessible. The aim of this talk is to provide a sense of this extraordinary album, what it might have meant to its creator, and the various subjects addressed in it, culminating with those relating to textiles and rugs as Graham encountered and used them in his official and private life. The album provides possibly unique views of the manner in which rugs and textiles were offered for sale to Europeans resident in Tehran, how this young diplomat used them in his own digs, and rare views of carpet production at Sultanabad. Jeff Spurr is Islamic and Middle East Specialist at the Documentation Center of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University. In that capacity he manages one collection of approximately 190,000 slides and photographs documenting Islamic visual culture in its broadest definition, and another collection of about 90,000 historical photographs of the Middle East and adjacent regions, irrespective of subject, taken by commercial and amateur photographers during the 19th and early decades of the 20th c., including the professional oeuvre of Josephine Powell, dating from the early 1950s through the 1970s. Jeff was active in efforts to rehabilitate destroyed and damaged Bosnian academic library collections, coordinating the Bosnia Library Project (1996-2005), and now is engaged in addressing the plight of similarly afflicted Iraqi academic libraries and archives. His research interests are devoted to the history of photography in the Middle East, and historical rugs and textiles, most recently addressing the Kashmir shawl’s presence in, and impact on, Persia. Jeff is a member of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Textiles and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Collections Committee of the Harvard University Art Museums, and the Advisory Council of the Textile Museum, Washington, DC. return to home page