Frontispiece: Portrait of Turkish Summer Costume

In Frontispiece: Portrait of Turkish Summer Costume, Francis Frith has presented himself in traditional oriental attire. Frith was one of the most notable photographers of the exotic Grand Tour’s representation during the Romantic era. Frith’s photographs depict the Middle East as a land of mysticism and otherness for consumption by Western viewers. Frith acknowledged that the primary consumers of his photographs were ‘armchair travelers’ who hoped to obtain a true record of far-off regions of the world. Although photography does capture an exact image of the scene placed before the camera, it is arguable that Frith’s images are not true records of the Middle East. Through elaborate staging, Frith constructed romanticized images of the Middle East that tell incomplete narratives. The dynamic of consumption whereby photographers from the West stage the Middle East as the exotic ‘other’ for Western consumption continues in photojournalistic practices of the modern era.