Throughout this essay, I found it really intriguing how Behdad organized depictions of the Orient into almost a lens of the way the world viewed the Orient -a photograph. Ali claimed that these photographs were all linked according to an ideology of coming from an exotic land far away from the West. Throughout history, more scattered and disillusioned images of the Orient came alive and were captured in the photos he displays throughout the essay. To me, the Orientalist Photograph is a cross-disciplinary approach between depictions of the West and the Middle East. The Orientalist photograph not only freezes the Orientalist once through an erotic stage, but also through an ideological point of view. Ali reinforces the differences between a true photograph and a painting delineating the emotions that can be found. When looking at explicit photographs taken by Middle Eastern people, you are able to see the true emotions shown. But when looking at a candid photograph, the European viewer was able to easily create their own interpretation which could easily be interpreted as negative connotations and bleak perspectives.
Since we focused on the first paragraph of this essay in FYS, I thought it was easy to identify the working assumptions in the introduction. Ali made a central claim and used it to analyze and understand the layout for the rest of the essay. It allowed me to realize that Orientalism emerged from the field of postcolonialism. Ali conceptualizes and questions what makes these orientalist photographs so favorable, intriguing, and souvenir-like. He talks about how the iconography of Arab women is viewed merely as a cultural cliche. By attempting to sexualize these women through carte-de-visite (visiting cards), middle-class Europeans were able to easily access and interpret the “Orient” in a mystical, exotic, and foreign stance. The political side of the Orient is not displayed in these particular Orientalist photographs, but were still “democratized” through these photographs. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this because the terminology was very concrete and straightforward to understand.
