This dissertation examines the representations of Istanbul in the state sponsored photography of the 1930s Turkey. The official state photographer Pferschy's photos of the spaces of the new nation---buildings, cities, and landscapes played an active role in the discursive construction of Turkey's national iconography. These photographs, documents of Turkey's nation-building project, reconstructed Istanbul's image as a museum and a landscape versus the progressive and modern face of the republic, Ankara.

Iconic photographs of architectural and urban modernization from the early Republican era have been identified with the monolithic vision of the Kemalist regime. Being a project of the mono-party era propaganda apparatus, state photography was an attempt to cast a unified, complete self-image, which Pferschy's perfect compositions and depictions of monumentality supported.

The present study shows that this totalizing image, which represented the national identity, fell short to keep its uniformity; and that the Republican era Turkish national identity was a process of negotiation with the Ottoman past and Orientalism. To do this, instead of concentrating on individual photographs, I trace Pferschy's works over the timespan of almost thirty years, in a number of different publications such as La Turquie Kemaliste (journal), Turkey in Pictures (photo album), Hayat (magazine), tourist guidebooks and postcards. The venues where the photos are published, used, and reused (or by the same token, excluded and unpublished) are as important as the individual photos themselves. In this dissertation, I emphasize the ways in which photographs circulate and recirculate, the texts that accompany the photographs, and the discourses that create the photographic meaning. I examine not only the discursivity of photographic representations of built spaces and landscapes but also the changing identity and style of the photographer depending on broader contextual choices, such as the demands of patrons or direct political and monetary interventions. The study of the dissemination, intertextuality, and recycling of the photographic images is expected to show different moments, venues, and agents that disrupted totalizing perceptions of the periods, styles and genres.