Description

This set of 5 black and white photographs shows Byzantine capitals in the Istanbul cisterns. Three images are marked on the back as cisterns on the locations of or near Nuruosmaniye (2 images) and Kıztaşı, and two images are marked as “Cisterne de Nuhandja” and “Cisterne d’Otloukofi Yecan (?)”. 

All the photographs show the capitols on difficult accessible places, sometimes with traces of debris at the back. The photographs offer a valuable archeological and art-historical information, because many of the smaller cisterns of Istanbul remained forgotten through the history and were only discovered recently.

The photos, which all have inscriptions in French language on the back, were probably made during WWI and come from a private collection with other similar objects of photographs and drawings, all made in Turkey and the Middle East in between circa 1917 and 1920.