PDN – The Netherlands-based publisher Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn & Co has published rare photos of 19th-century Persia on behalf of the International Qajar Studies Association. The photos were taken or collected by Dr. Joseph Désiré Tholozan (1820-1897), the personal physician of Nasseredin Shah.
Alongside his professional career, Tholozan travelled all over Persia (Iran) in the company of Nassereddin Shah. The country became not only his field of observation, but his field of intervention as well, as he continued his whole life pursuing his vocation, caring for sick patients. He died in Tehran and was buried in the Catholic Cemetery of the Capital.
Tholozan amassed a large body of photographs depicting his forty years of life in Persia, that are today housed at the Middle East Centre of St. Antony’s College, Oxford.
This book is a photo-album containing more than 120 photographs which portray the social life, historical monuments and the unique nature of Persia in the second half of the 19th-century, when the Qajar dynasty was ruling the country.
In publishing this photo-album, the editors (Reza Sheikh and Corien Vuurman) had to face the challenge of dealing with a large number of caption-less photographs lacking even a single word of explanation by their creator. This challenge was addressed through a collaboration with a fine team of international scholars, bringing this project to a successful conclusion.
Putting the Shah in the Landscape is therefore a ‘scrapbook’ of a long journey from archives and conference halls, discussions and lengthy rounds of emails with colleagues around the world; which allows us to follow Tholozan from tent to tent, exposing what he saw, recounting what he may have heard.
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