Memorable portraits by unknown Qajar photographer

Mirza Seyedalikhan Mostofi, entitled Etemad-e Hozoor the son of Mirza Seyedaliakbar Mostofi, is considered as one of the most active but anonymous photographers during Qajar era. In spite of large number of his works in galleries of Golestan palace, the collection of pictorial documentaries in central library of Tehran University and on the niches of most of old houses in Iran, there is not much popularity for his name in different photography histories of Iran. Most of his works subjects are governmental officials, nobles and appointed people which have been taken in his private studio in a particular style. Some of these photos have been drawn by well-known painters and published in a lithography form in Sharaf and Sharafat newspapers that are two known newspapers in the Qajar era. As we know, about five hundred of his works are available now. Most of his photographs have been taken indoor, in his private studio and a few numbers of his works have been taken outdoor. His subjects are governmental officials but in some collections we can see photos of regular people and even poor people. No portrait from shah has been founded in his works but there is a photo of a woman that seems to be the shah's wife. Except this one, other portrait sitters are males. He made his studio by himself and paid the costs by himself. Later, as Shah realized his skill, he managed the royal photography studio and took portraits from governmental officials. This could be understood from series of photographs that have same titles and same method. His technique was wet collodion and his photographs have been taken in a studio with textile back ground and some decorations that are obviously artificial. The most important point in his photographs is that he seems to use same clothes in his studio for different subjects. The clothes and a significant sword are used in a series of portraits that make us believe that he was the first photographer that supplied his studio with some accessories to be used in the photographs for different persons. Most of his works are framed by special cardboards. His name is printed in English on these frames and all of the portraits have a subtitle that seems to be written by the photographer explaining the situation, name and posts of the portrait sitters. His photographs have less artistic or aesthetic value and can be mostly classified as practical photographs. In this study, his photographic technique and his particular style in portraiture are studied. There are a lot of portraits taken by him but he is still anonymous because his works haven’t yet been studied. This research relying on visual and library documents was performed through an explanative- documentary method. Data was collected by observation and library methods. We have tried to investigate all his works, traits and photograph taking methods with regard to very limited resources of information written by him.