Photography and Recognizing Historical Changes of Qajar Era: A New Historical View

The emergence of photography and filming industry during the Qajar era and documentation of many different developments of that period have provided researchers of contemporary history of Iran with many credible, genuine and coincident documents. So many untouched and lesser studied subjects are covered in the photographs or films which could be examined with diverse point of views and also fulfill the gap of evidence about certain historic events. For example, based on the photographs and documentaries of the Qajar era, the current researchers could infer certain innovative ideas in many subjects including: the clothing of Iranian ethnic groups, architecture and structural designs, the changes occurred in the condition of the historical monuments since Qajar time, details of certain important historic events such as Constitutional Revolution, the origins of some immigrant tribes to Iran, distinction in the social state of affairs since then and so on. In particular, the photographs and films are capable to represent the actual circumstances compared to the paintings and depictions of the artists; subsequently the researcher could employ the photographs and films of that period to re-evaluate the questionable historical issues or their details. In particular, regarding the subjects and structures which have changed so far, e.g. historical monuments, the significance of the primordial photographs and films are exceptional and unique to study the transformation of a monument or an archeological or historic site. In this paper, considering the variety of the mentioned topics and diversity of the photographic documents, I have intended to evaluate and represent novel historic outlook via observing certain important photographs of the Qajar period displaying much of aforementioned information.