Remaining Mysteries

Important mysteries that remain unresolved: Who exactly selected the images in this album? What audiences were most explicitly targeted? Which realities were intentionally excluded from view, like poverty, displacement, dissent, and violence? How did American officials originally interpret the album upon receiving it? And how did its meaning shift during periods of U.S.–Ottoman and later U.S.–Turkish relations? 

Further research into Ottoman archival correspondence, diplomatic records, and alternative photographic collections is necessary to reconstruct the album’s original political life more fully. Digital humanities tools may also allow scholars to map circulation patterns of these images across platforms and generations.