Books by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
How does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news ... more How does a photograph become a news image? An ethnography of the labor behind international news images, Image Brokers ruptures the self-evidence of the journalistic photograph by showing the many factors determining how news audiences are shown people, events, and the world. News images, Zeynep Gürsel argues, function as formative fictions – fictional insofar as these images are constructed and culturally mediated, and formative because their public presence and circulation have real consequences in the world.
Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and based on fieldwork conducted at photojournalism’s centers of power, Image Brokers offers an intimate look at an industry in crisis. At the turn of the 21st century, image brokers—the people who manage the distribution and restriction of news images—found the core technologies of their craft, the status of images, and their own professional standing all changing rapidly with the digitalization of the infrastructures of representation. From corporate sales meetings to wire service desks, newsrooms to photography workshops and festivals, Image Brokers investigates how news images are produced and how worldviews are reproduced in the process.
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520286375
Articles by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
Visual Anthropology Review, 2023
Between 1896 and 1908, over 4300 Ottoman Armenians emigrated abroad through terk-i tabiiyet, an e... more Between 1896 and 1908, over 4300 Ottoman Armenians emigrated abroad through terk-i tabiiyet, an expatriation process that required emigrants never return to the empire. A key step in this process was sitting for a photograph. Using Ottoman Armenian expatriation photographs as an example, this article details “looking together” as a method for working ethnographically with photographs. It details three moments in time and three kinds of time to show how looking together yielded an understanding of how the state intended these photographs to function and how individuals conscripted these portraits of unbelonging into their own projects of belonging.
Tatos Cartozian was naturalized in Portland, Oregon in May 1923, a decision that was immediately ... more Tatos Cartozian was naturalized in Portland, Oregon in May 1923, a decision that was immediately challenged on racial grounds. This article follows the Cartozian familyfrom their sitting for an Ottoman expatriation portrait to exit the Ottoman empire in 1906 to their deft use of advertising and portrait photography in the United States in order to rethink the politics of visibility and legal belonging. As several Asian groups were deemed ineligible for citizenship on account of not being "white," the very grounds on which "whiteness" was to be determined-whether scientific expertise or assumed common knowledge-was continually shifting. In order to become US citizens, the Cartozians had to exit the category of "Asiatic" and join the ranks of the unmarked citizenry in the United States. Counterintuitively, they managed to do so while advertising their family business frequently and boldly as "America's Largest Oriental Rug Organization." Under what conditions were individuals brought into photographic visibility for the state? This has been the question guiding my research on Ottoman photography for over a decade. The repositories in which I encounter Ottoman photographs are all official archives-either the archives of various ministries, such as the Ministry of
Grey Room, 2018
This article examines the Haseki portrait album comprising formal portraits of late 19th centur... more This article examines the Haseki portrait album comprising formal portraits of late 19th century female patients of the Haseki Women's Hospital from Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamit's palace archive to ask how such images require us to rethink agency in photography as well as the traditional differences between medical and political imaging technologies. In this dive into an unusual archive, we confront how care is visualized and to what end. These formal portraits show each patient modestly dressed in hospital issued uniform yet baring her abdomen to show a surgical scar. In a specimen jar on the ornate table each woman leans on is displayed the tumor removed by the gynecological surgeon. How do we make sense of these images displaying that which was once internal to these women to themselves, the surgeon and the sultan?
The Unity Rally (Marché Republicaine) in Paris on January 11, 2015, organized in the aftermath of... more The Unity Rally (Marché Republicaine) in Paris on January 11, 2015, organized in the aftermath of the deadly attacks on the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, was a spectacle staged to produce images of unity after an act of terror itself triggered by the global circulation of injurious visuals. In this paper I analyze the Unity Rally as a case study of the production of a contemporary public not merely by the consumption of but also by the collective production and circulation of media. How do publics witness themselves? While the Unity Rally was ostensibly spontaneous, I explore a series of institutional patterns, social needs and behaviors, technological infrastructures, and iconic templates involving state actors, private individuals, and communication networks to understand the overdetermined manner in which it was photographed.
This article interrogates the relationship between sovereignty and image production by exploring ... more This article interrogates the relationship between sovereignty and image production by exploring the photographic collection of the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid (ruled 1876–1909). It specifically rethinks depictions of political events through the example of x-ray photographs, focusing on albums containing x-rays of wounds sustained by Ottoman soldiers in the Greco–Turkish war of 1897.
Photographic Figure Studies as a Mode of Ethnography?
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This article examines the politics of image brokering in the daily rituals of a major wire servic... more This article examines the politics of image brokering in the daily rituals of a major wire service's photography division. Specifically, it investigates crises of visualization: moments when routine visualization itself is challenged due to changes in infrastructures of representation. The transition to digital transmission has changed work of image brokers—people involved in the creation, validation, packaging, and circulation of images. New image brokers and changed infrastructures of representation challenge established hierarchies and who provides and polices news images. At a moment when the war on terror is also a war of images, battles over the infrastructures of representation are battles over visual worldmaking. [digital, infrastructure of representation, photography, Agence France Presse, journalism, crisis of representation, wire service, visualization, Iraq]
A Challenge for Visual Journalism: Rendering the Labor Behind News Images Visible
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Covering Gezi: Reflecting on Photographing Daily Life during Extraordinary Events
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Chapter from 9/11 New York Istanbul. Feride Çiçekoglu, ed. Istanbul Bilgi University Press, pp. 1... more Chapter from 9/11 New York Istanbul. Feride Çiçekoglu, ed. Istanbul Bilgi University Press, pp. 152-191. (English/Turkish bilingual book)
Journal Special Issue by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
Visual Anthropology Review, 2023
Podcasts by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
Ottoman History Podcast
Crossover episode with Anthropod, 2021
Online Gods, 2019
You can now listen to episode #15 of Online Gods – A Podcast about Digital Cultures
http://www.fo... more You can now listen to episode #15 of Online Gods – A Podcast about Digital Cultures
http://www.fordigitaldignity.com/news-images-and-surveillance/
This month we’re talking about digital news images with Zeynep Gürsel and online surveillance with Nayantara Ranganathan.
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Books by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
Set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and based on fieldwork conducted at photojournalism’s centers of power, Image Brokers offers an intimate look at an industry in crisis. At the turn of the 21st century, image brokers—the people who manage the distribution and restriction of news images—found the core technologies of their craft, the status of images, and their own professional standing all changing rapidly with the digitalization of the infrastructures of representation. From corporate sales meetings to wire service desks, newsrooms to photography workshops and festivals, Image Brokers investigates how news images are produced and how worldviews are reproduced in the process.
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520286375
Articles by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
Journal Special Issue by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
Podcasts by Zeynep Devrim Gursel
http://www.fordigitaldignity.com/news-images-and-surveillance/
This month we’re talking about digital news images with Zeynep Gürsel and online surveillance with Nayantara Ranganathan.