War photography is one of the branches of photographic practice and an important source of visual history of past times. Shortly after its invention and widespread distribution, photography was profitably used to represent the different regions of the world where military operations were taking place. Although we talk about war photography of the second half of the 19th century and despite the particular attention given to the Crimean War of 1853-1856, reference works on photography make no mention of the Russo War. -Turkish from 1877-1878. The latter was another important event in modern history and a conflict between two empires, again taking place in the Black Sea basin region. The reason for lack of attention and understudy of the visual history of a particular region and era may well be that Western European states were not involved in the war. As a result, very few documents are preserved in Western repositories and have not attracted the attention of Western historians of photography. Most of the photographic material discussed below is held at the National Museum of Georgia, and smaller collections of the same content are available at other institutions in Georgia and around the world. The “Ermakov Collection”, named after its last private owner, includes thousands of negative plates and constitutes one of the most renowned photographic collections, without however being contextualized. Despite the complete cataloging of the plates, based on Dmitri Ermakov's inscriptions (at the bottom of most photos), much about the collection remains unclear and requires the work of generations of researchers to obtain precise information about each image, its subject, date and place. Our attention now shifts to the activity of photographs, depicting the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the broader geographic region where the theater of war took place, also before and after this geopolitical event. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayErmakov, born to Italian-born architect and a Molokane (Russian) mother in Nakhichevan, later moved to Tiflis (Tbilisi) and was based there for the rest of his life, while traveling extensively in the Middle East. In the early 1860s, he attended the year-long course of military topographers at the Ananuri Military-Topographical Depot (a historic fortress and settlement 102 kilometers north of Tiflis, on the Georgian Military Road), which operated at the Caucasian General Staff of the Russian Army. Army. This depot was opened on January 8, 1863 and was the first photographic unit of the Caucasian Army of the Russian Empire. Its aim was to build a strategic vision of the Caucasus and neighboring regions, and to record the army's military personnel, its training activities, the course of military operations and the daily life of the troops. What is notable to us is that the unit also used photography for topographical, archaeological and ethnographic studies. Generally speaking, for all areas of social life to which this new recording tool could be beneficial. It was there that Dmitri Ermakov and his fellow photographers studied and mastered photography. This determined the thematic scope and the photographers' approach to recording tools. It is appropriate first of all to dwell on some known biographical facts of Dmitri Ermakov (1846-1916) and other photographers, linked to their activities in Türkiye. Ermakov, who traveled abroad a lot,also followed the Turkish Black Sea coast in the pre-war period and photographed it, as well as the lands of historic Western Armenia (today northeast of Turkey). In 1870 he delivered a collection of views depicting the sites northeast of the Turkish city of Erzurum, with its ancient architecture and ancient roads. In 1872, Ermakov took part in a long archaeological expedition to the Asian and European cities of Türkiye, reaching the city of Varna. The photographer's tasks included photographic recording of architectural monuments and general views of the sites. At least officially this is true, but having conducted previously planned military intelligence is more credible. It is likely that Ermakov carried out topographical photography for the high command of the General Staff of the Imperial Russian Army. In the early 1870s, shortly after the expedition, he sent views of (historical) Turkish Armenia to the Russian Geographical Society. In 1874, Ermakov took part in the anniversary exhibition of the Société Française de Photographie, presenting 17 photographic views of the Turkish town of Amasya. The 28-year-old photographer received the medal for this collection and gained international recognition. Thus, during the approaching war, Ermakov had a well-established reputation as a master of photography. In 1877–1878, Ermakov received an assignment as a military photographer during the Russo-Turkish War, depicting views of the Caucasus front line and beyond. Some photos, between numbers 2093-2198 of his 1896 catalog, prove that the photographer was present in the regular area. army, certainly, in the dislocation zone of the 41st Infantry Division. At the same time he depicted the ethnographic “types” of the Russian and Ottoman sides, soldiers and civilians. Other photographers based in or associated with Tiflis, the capital of the Russian Caucasus Viceroyalty at the time, also witnessed fateful geopolitical power plays in the region. Special mention should be made of Vladimir Barkanov and Dmitry Nikitin, who actively participated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 as field photographers and whose work is grouped together in an entire “Ermakov collection”. "It was during this period of the 1870s-1880s that the genre of military reporting was established, and its representatives produced thousands of images, ultimately due to the lack of copyright author on the unidentified images. Barkanov served as a photojournalist on the Caucasus front between 1877 and the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, creating a unique series of photographs taken on the front line in 1881, at the Photography Exhibition. from Toulouse, he received a diploma for his contribution to the development of photography Another photographer, Nikitin, lived and worked for twenty years in what is now Georgia. In 1863 he worked in Tiflis as an assistant doctor and it was during his time. free that he became interested in photography Nikitin served as a photoreporter on the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and he too made a great contribution in this field. He was particularly famous for his photographs. military, widely published in magazines and newspapers. The duties and tasks of military photographers during the war of 1877-1878 included: depiction of military events, camps, the front line, portraits of decorated soldiers and officers, rear activities, military hospitals and the prisoners. Strategic cities and their suburbs in northeast Turkey and southwest Georgia (dubious territories between two empires) were all captured by their objective. Like recording the actual battle (physical movementsfast) was impossible due to the technical development of equipment at that time, photographers often applied themselves to staged scenes. The same thing happened with other photographers, not just Ermakov, Nikiton and/or Barkanov, and each of them continued their pre-war activities, adding more fascinating and "exotic" images to their activities commercialized, because their photos were generally in high demand by society. . Ermakov would have worked with one or more assistants, as was usual practice; he would need at least some physical help to manage the heavy and difficult cameras and chemical development processes. It is also very possible that he sends his collaborators to these different places with “more modest missions” previously identified. » In addition, some of the photographic material for the albums also came from other photographers, from whom he simply purchased negative plates. The result is an enormous wealth of photographic information, which can be described as extensive and multifaceted. The main visual feature of Ermakov's photography is the maximum capture of airspace in his images, conditioned by the use of wide lenses and obviously linked to his experience, knowledge and needs in topography, as well as for general purposes – such as data collection for cartographic and ethnographic purposes. Some of these served as illustrative material for the press and most were to serve as the basis for military topographical maps. Unfortunately, it is difficult to clearly define the connections between particular photographic images and the maps, but it is clear that these connections (and the preconditioned strategic needs they contain) existed. All this material constitutes invaluable documentation of history today and has not yet been examined by the various representatives of the social sciences and humanities who study the history of Russia and the Middle East. Despite all these notes, the majority of photographs remain unidentified in terms of dates and locations. The reason is that, on the one hand, the "Ermakov collection" includes the work of many other photographers and, on the other hand, Ermakov himself visited various regions of Turkey on several occasions, produced numerous images and paid almost no attention to the precise annotations. Ermakov, who largely practiced photography on his own, also ran commercial photography studios, worked on official state orders, and was engaged in collections. It is mainly for this reason that his photography is a subject of continuous misunderstandings, opposing considerations and difficulties of identification. All these photographs and many more can be found today in Ermakov's 126 commercial albums. They contain a large quantity of photographs from regions and peoples of the Caucasus itself, from the territories of the empires of Turkey, Russia, Persia and beyond; including present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Russian provinces of the North Caucasus, the countries of Central Asia, Crimea, Georgia, northeastern Persia and almost half of the entire Turkey. Ermakov's legacy includes tens of thousands of positive prints, glass negatives, stereoscopic images and numerous albums. However, as we have already noted above, about half of all this is not achieved by him personally. In different cases the images were inherited, purchased or given for physical preservation and copying to Ermakov, who, following a free attitude towards copyright (common at the time), incorporated them into his extensive collection and printed in two printed catalogs of 1896 and.