Engels Gezantschap/ambassade, Teheran [?], Iran c. 1880 - 1910

This albumen print, made by Antoine Sevruguin in Iran, shows us the British Embassy in Tehran. Sevruguin, of Russo-Georgian heritage, made his career in Iran, and came to be known as the country’s pre-eminent photographer. Think about the labor involved in this image. It may seem like a straightforward task, but in the 19th century, creating a photograph was demanding. Glass plate negatives had to be prepared by hand, coated with light-sensitive emulsion, exposed in the camera, and then developed using dangerous chemicals. All this had to be done quickly, before the emulsion dried. The final print, made on albumen paper – that’s paper coated with egg white – required careful manipulation and long exposure to sunlight. Sevruguin’s photographs provided visual documents of a rapidly changing Iran, and were collected by tourists, researchers, and the Iranian court. The very act of photography, then, was caught up in global networks of trade and cultural exchange. It reminds us that even a seemingly simple image is the result of complex social and material processes.