Femme turque en toilette de ville

This striking photograph was made by the Beirut studio of Félix Bonfils, whose documentation of west-Asian subjects indulged the Orientalist fantasies of foreign tourists. Bonfils’s wife, Marie-Lydie, made exquisite photographic prints for the studio, as well as portraits of women customarily prohibited from posing for men. Privileging intrigue over accuracy, these likenesses did not always depict the authentic dress of their sitters. Variously identified as Turkish and Syrian, this example reflects a muddled grasp of regional styles. It was reproduced to illustrate an 1880s travelogue, whose French author wrote of women who "avoid us and ostentatiously turn their heads away." His embittered account of their customary veils is in no way substantiated by the source image—a resplendent study of cotton and silk.