Between past and future ruins: Post-Ottoman Niš in the album of Knez Milan Obrenović

The Niš album: Two plots

In this context, what are the visual claims and stakes of the Niš album? These can be read through an understanding of the album's genre as a form of curation of a particular historical narrative. As Issam Nassar (2021: 159) argues, photographic albums are “both intentional visual narratives that recount an already envisioned narrative fashioned by their compilers, and archives in which photographs that were deemed significant by the collector were preserved.” The album effectively displaces the photographs from the realm of what Edwards (2001: 5) called polyvalent and uncontained “raw histories” into disciplined historical narratives. It is itself a hybrid form, combining images and text of subtitles. Since here the compiler is the state, via the army, I read the Niš album as a form of a state-sanctioned historical narrative and national “photographic archive” (Caraffa and Tiziana Serena, 2015). Thus, I am particularly interested in the correspondences and dissonances between the visual narrative of the album, and textual accounts of late 19th-century Niš, such as those produced by a civil servant and writer Milan Đ. Milićević, or foreign observers, such as Felix Phillip Kanitz. Do the album's photographs disrupt the established historical narratives, and, in Zananiri's (2021: 12) words “hint[…] at the extent of archival silences in textual material”? To what extent are the album photographs, like all historical narratives, plagued by their own “bundle of silences” (Trouillot, 2015: 27), in this context perhaps more pertinently called blind spots?

I follow the album's narrative into its “subplots” of village and city. The two subplots represent not only two different localities but also different renderings of the time of national history. In each, the images powerfully evoke other times and their own afterlives. I analyze these photographic chronotopes over the remainder of the essay.

Village: The privileged place of national history

I begin with the village, because it is the carefully curated images of the Niš hinterland that represent most clearly the state-sanctioned narrative of national history and the place in it awarded to Niš. The album produces a visual narrative of this history, embedded in a specific space-time that served to connect the newly annexed Niš to the rest of Serbia. This chronotope comprises the hilly landscape in the Northeast of Niš—the hills of Vinik and Čegar, the villages of Kamenica and (Gornji) Matejevac, and the eastern outskirts of the city—and the year 1809. The main purpose of this topography is to inscribe the region into the wider history of the First Serbian Uprising, and the story of Serbian liberation from Ottoman rule. The visual travelog traverses to the point the same itinerary as the better-known narrative travelogs, such as that of Milan Đ. Milićević (1884).

At the same time, the photographs of the Niš hinterland invoke a different kind of temporality. Ever since Vuk Karadžić, the famous language reformer, folklorist, and an overall towering figure in the 19th-century history of the region, postulated the village as the space of national authenticity, in contrast to the heterogeneity of the city, Serbian intellectuals pursued villages to look for the “true essence” of the nation. Here, among the rural, wide spaces and the vineyard-covered hills, the photographer is on the lookout for such authenticity and finds it in the images of church ruins, peasant houses and clothing. The hinterland, then, is a place where the time of the Serbian uprising intersects with the “eternal” time of the nation, embodied in the peasant.

The central focus of this portion of the album forms around two images titled “The Grave of Sinđelić” (Grob Sinđelijćev). The images depict the front and back side of what appears to be a grave with a gravestone but are not. Instead, it is a monument, probably the first one erected by the Serbian state in the annexed region in the summer of 1878 (Milićević, 1884: 77–78). There were no bodily remains of Stevan Sinđelić, the leader of the spectacularly lost 1809 battle of Kamenica, who ended the battle by shooting into gunpowder storage. The defeat marked the failure of the first Serbian uprising to reach the lands beyond the Šumadija region (Stojančević, 1994: 49). The narrative of the heroic defeat, with clear reminiscences to the more famous Kosovo battle in 1389, became the chosen narrative used to adopt the new region.

The photograph here doubles the work of the monument, by connecting Sinđelić to Knez Milan, represented as his heir and avenger. One side of the marble stone is dedicated to “Vojvoda Stevan Sinđelić and his immortal men, who fell gloriously while attacking Niš on May 19, 1809,” while its other side invokes Knez Milan as someone who fulfilled Sinđelić's mission and “with his army avenged them by conquering Niš on December 28, 1878.” The monument's two sides represent their actions as two steps in the continuous effort to liberate the city from Ottoman rule, part of a wider Serbian historical narrative. ⁸ Sinđelić's name was used in other localities in Niš, for example, to name a fortification that previously carried the name of the famous Ottoman reformer and former Niš governor, Midhat Pasha, and which was represented on one of the photographs still under its old name.

The memorialization of the Kamenica battle is only completed by the photograph of another monument, this time not erected but inherited: the gruesome Skull Tower (Ćele Kula), with skulls of the fallen rebels built into the walls. At that time located outside of the city, on the road to Istanbul, the tower represented striking revenge by Hurşid Pasha for the Kamenica battle, built to intimidate local Christians. The tower became a favorite site for travelers, and perhaps the most commonly lithographed and photographed object in 19th-century Niš, particularly after the visit of the French author and politician Alphonse de Lamartine in 1833 (on tower's memorialization see Borozan, 2015). Midhat Pasha is said to have wanted the tower's destruction, but the monument was ultimately preserved. For Serbian authorities of the time, it became the central place of memory enabling them to, in the words of Jeremy F. Walton (2019: 357), “silence the heterogeneity of the Ottoman past and its equally heterogeneous legacies in the present,” to flatten “ambivalent legacies” of the past into one narrative of religious and ethnic animosity. In contrast, the photographs that hint at other possible narratives, such as those depicting the buildings symbolic of the Midhat Pasha's efforts in the Tanzimat reforms, including the hospital and military barracks, are scattered around the album and do not form a specific narrative. Other buildings, including the Christian school and the church, are not depicted at all, or only from afar.

Finally, it is in the villages of Kamenica and Gornji Matejevac that the photographer takes on the role of a traveler-ethnographer. The choice of the villages was not random: the two villages were not only connected to the Uprising, and the Tanzimat revolts of the 1840s, but they were also geographically closest to and best connected with central Serbia. They were also exceptionally wealthy so that some of their inhabitants were able to purchase property in other villages and in the city of Niš itself after the annexation.

The central photograph of this series portrays what looks like a typical village festivity in Kamenica. People, mostly women and children, clothed in traditional garments, stand arranged in a circle for a traditional folk dance of kolo. They are stiff and motionless, as the long exposure of the photograph required, where they would normally be dancing. This stiffness emphasizes their relegation to an ethnographic object. The bright white layered dresses of local women dominate the picture. The view of their heavily embroidered aprons and headdresses is somewhat limited by the size and quality of the photograph. However, we—following the photographer—are not the only ones observing the kolo. At least one man in military uniform, several male peasants, and two men who appear to be dressed as wealthier Muslims, under an umbrella, are watching the scene (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

The Kamenica Villagers. National Museum of Niš.

The ethnographic pictures from the Niš villages most clearly resonate with the contemporary photographic surveys in the region. The image of the peasants—perhaps unwittingly—contests the Ottoman survey project, Elbise-i Osmaniyye (1873), which also claimed and exoticized the local peasant. In the Ottoman album, the clothing of a Christian female peasant from Matejevac is selected as one of the clothing types representative of the Vilayet of Prizren, which had then encompassed Niš (Elbise-i Osmaniyye, Plate 12). In the photograph, the Ottoman model, though herself from Istanbul (see Ersoy, 2003), wears a striped apron just like those in the Niš album. In the written description, the Ottoman volume presents peasant clothing in unflattering terms, as inexpensive and simple, comparable to that of other peasants “of Bulgarian origin.” The description in the Elbise (1873: 61–62) is consistent with the description later produced by Milićević's (1884: 136) travelog: long linen shirts covered with short embroidered aprons, hair decorated by coins and metal plates, necklaces and earrings, and traditional leather shoes. The overlap destabilizes what we see: both surveys understand the costume as authentic and representative of a specific ethnic group, but both that group and the polity to which it belongs are not a matter of costume, but of the album's framing (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

The Church near Matejevac. National Museum of Niš.

Another photograph from the Niš album which intersects with a different survey is that of an unnamed church near Matejevac, photographed in a ruined condition. Between 1871 and 1884, architects Mihailo Valtrović and Dragutin Milutinović, with the support of the Serbian Learned Society, completed a major survey of Serbia's architectural heritage, focusing mainly on churches and monasteries. Just like the imperial surveys, theirs had multiple aims. As architectural historian Aleksandar Ignjatović (2014) argues, Valtrović and Milutinović sought to establish Serbia as an heir to both Byzantine and medieval Serbian states. Their survey strived to provide the new state not only with an illustrious past, but also with a promising political future, as the claim on cultural monuments was also a claim to the state's (potential) political borders (Ignjatović, 2014: 268–269). In 1878, the two extended their existing survey into the annexed region, again with the army's accompaniment (Valtrović and Milutinović, 2007: 53). There, they recorded the same church, providing what they called the “very picturesque ruin” with a name and a biography. (Their recording was not done in the photograph, but in pen and ink and aquarelle. Probably for financial reasons, since the two worked in considerable hardship despite state support, photography played only a marginal role.) They identified the church as the Church of Holy Trinity on Metoh Hill, built of brick in strict Byzantine style (ibid: 49). Furthermore, they tied the church to Serbian history in two ways: first, by dating it to the 14th century and the Serbian medieval state (today it is regarded as pre-Nemanjić), and, second, by noting that “Around this church was the place of Hajduk Veljko during the Kamenica battle.” Once again, the locality became a place of temporal overlap between the medieval state and the First Uprising. They did not mention that the church was locally known as the “Latin church,” for having been used by Dubrovnik merchants in the 16th century (Figure 3). ⁹

City: The ambivalent terrain

While the countryside rendered itself seemingly easily to the new national photographic narrative, the city's heterogeneous and unwieldy spaces were far more difficult to discipline. The main way in which the album represents urban Niš is through three comprehensive panoramas, two of which frame the Niš part of the album on opposite sides. Such framing emphasizes the album's attempt to offer a detailed and total inventory of the city, fostering what Zarobell (2003: 640) calls “a colonial vision of dominion and possession.” The panoramas may not be obvious to the viewer, because each is cut up into separate images connected by the same title. It is only by taking out the photographs and pasting them together that the original seamless panoramas are recreated.

The photographs of the village and of the city are in many ways counterparts. If the selective images of the village all foster one dominant narrative, here the flattening eye of the panoramic camera opens the view to numerous possibilities of interpretation. Furthermore, the village and the city indicate different potential material afterlives, perhaps best expressed through the metaphor (and reality) of ruins. In the village, church ruins are photographable as a carefully selected past. To paraphrase Svetlana Boym (2011), the ruins of the church represent a remainder rather than trace of a collapse; they do not point to a melancholic past but toward a promise of the future. In contrast, the city is photographed as future ruins, disappearing as the photographs are being printed, its value denied by the modernization project. Here yet-to-be ruins indicate not the loss of the city, but the loss of other possible futures, in particular those that had been drawn by the Ottoman modernization project.

The two panoramas taken from an elevated point on the wall of Niš Fortress offer an exceptional image of the city, and—returning to Nassar—its visual archive. The photographer stood in the same place and carefully moved the camera to capture the images piece by piece. The large panorama shows the city outside of the fortress wall, while the small one depicts the landscape inside the fortress. In this, the photographer unwittingly followed the logic of Ottoman administrative practices, whose records always divided the city into the fortress (kale) and all that stood outside. The photographer's position, perched on the wall above the main city gate, strongly implies the conquest and the power transfer in the city. Nothing symbolized the Ottoman power as did the fortress of Niš. Built in the context of the Ottoman-Habsburg wars in the early 18th century, the fortress later lost its military importance but continued to serve as the Ottoman administrative center, and as home to some of the Ottoman officials and Muslim population. In 1878, the fortress was handed over to the Serbian Army, and it remained in its possession in the following decades, closed to most civilians. The army's unmediated access to the fortress may help explain why the photographs from inside the fortress are the most detailed ones in the album, while what they show is the last view of the most comprehensively erased urban fabric in Niš.

The small, fortress panorama depicts a combination of mosques and Ottoman administrative buildings, interspersed with some civilian houses. It is a visual archive comparable only to the Ottoman registers of endowments, which gave a comprehensive account of the fortress mosques, schools, and related structures. The panorama shows, from left to right, the Belgrade gate, and the two mosques of the Edirne Bali neighborhood: Burmalı Mosque and Edirne Bâli Mosque, as well as the clock tower between them. In the background, on the right-hand side, is the minaret of the Hünkâr Mosque. A separate photograph shows (I presume) the Tekke Mosque, a structure adjacent to the Helveti Tekke, founded by Sheykh Mustafa Efendi. It looks like a dilapidated mausoleum with a short minaret. Depicted next to it is a pile of cannonballs. With some ambivalence, indicated by a question mark, the photograph is titled “The Grave of Karamustafa in Niš?” Apart from Edirne Bali Mosque, whose building—without a minaret—still exists, all of the fortress mosques were demolished by 1887 at the latest (Kanitz, 1909: 164–166). The clock tower, which Kanitz depicted adorned with a cross, is visible in later photographs from WWI (Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Inside the Fortress. National Museum of Niš.

The right-hand side shows the fortress section dominated by the Ottoman governmental seat. Leading to it is a vast cleared road, which, in the opinion of the urban historian Jovan Ćirić (1977), represented the first instance of city reconstruction implemented by the Serbian government. Two individual photographs of the building confirm that the army at least used the clearing, and may have made it. Taken in front of the governmental konak, one shows an assembly of military men, and the other shows the cannons and army vehicles. Lastly, the fortress was clearly the first residence of the Knez and the army. Another one of the single pictures shows the first residence of the Knez in Niš. It is clearly identifiable on the panorama behind the Belgrade gate.

Finally, the large panorama captures the city spreading across the Nišava river, framed by the fortress ramparts on the left and right. The skewed panoramic view makes the city appear unnaturally long, stretching along the Nišava's muddy banks, low walls partially protecting the houses from the river's moods. A local contemporary could have recognized the season from the river's look; I can only tell that the leaves are still on the trees, and so the winter is still at bay.

The central focus of the panorama is on the bright-colored, skewed triangle of the main commercial street, known as the covered bazaar. Beginning behind and below the photographer, the street stretches over the bridge and connects the fortress to the city center. It is lined with shops and Serbian flags. The street directs our gaze to two large buildings: the Pasha Mosque and the Orthodox Cathedral, which in this perspective appear in close proximity to one another. The older of them is the Şehid Osman Pasha Mosque, the richest in the city, financed by an endowment established in 1729 by Topal Osman Pasha, once the governor of Rumelia. The Orthodox Church, so large that it appears nearby but was actually located in the Christian neighborhood in the south of the city, was a later addition. It was built to embody, quite literally, one of the promises of the modernizing Tanzimat reforms: higher visibility of the empire's Christian population (see Riedler, 2018). Lastly, visible to the right of the mosque is the Jewish neighborhood, with its synagogue and school (Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

Niš City Center. National Museum of Niš.

The view that the photograph proclaims to be “old Niš” was in fact radically new: it was a feature of the Tanzimat reforms, especially pertaining to the second half of the 19th century. Yet it is also the last glimpse of the three communities represented together in the center of urban space. Two of three sacred buildings would be gone in 1879, the mosque demolished for city modernization, and the synagogue burned down in a neighborhood fire. We are reminded that, as Dawdy (2016: 31) argues, “(t)he perception that a particular landscape is old is more a measure of radical social change and cultural dispositions than a measure of actual chronological years.” Patina on the photograph invites us not to consume the image as a nostalgic view of “multicultural” Niš, but to critically investigate the narratives of progress that predefine some pasts as discardable.

This does not mean that everything from the Ottoman past was indeed discarded. Of particular interest among the preserved buildings is the luxurious residence (konak), which dominates the left side of the panorama. Its long, bright white wall, which parallels the river, is rhythmically interrupted by a row of dark brown windows. Its dark roof, in another contrast, is punctured by white chimneys, and overlooked by a slim white minaret. The Knez bought the konak from the wealthy Niš merchant and landowner named Bekir Bey, and turned it into his own court. However, the three photographs in the album—just like the very few other that remain of the building, later destroyed in World War I—are essentially the same, taken from across the river. We never get to see the konak from another side, nor can we glimpse any of its famed interiors or gardens. Yet it was those private spaces that fascinated contemporaries, who reported the rich decoration of gilded wooden carvings, furnaces made of Carrara marble, and the special “Arab room” decorated with “Moorish shapes” (Kanitz, 1909: 159–160; Popović-Šapčanin, 2014: 84–85).

Such absences disrupt the album's claim to totality and raise questions about the photographer's access. The most obvious among them is the absence of people. It is well known that long exposure time limited the ability of the photographers to capture people, making 19th-century photographs look ghostly—Benjamin's (2019: 176) famous remark is that Paris in Atget's photographs looks like a crime scene. In the Niš album, the people that do appear are often army men, like the two guards lingering at the Belgrade gate, or in the center of the composition on the main fortress bridge. The locals, on the other hand, if they do appear, look like the awkward composition in front of the shop in the same photograph, stiffened and arranged for the photograph, or at least insecure about it. None of the city's religious communities is depicted as a group, and there are no portraits. Even more surprisingly, there are no images from the Christian neighborhoods, no close-ups of the Christian cathedral, the Christian school that was used for the Serbian parliament sessions, or another church in their vicinity. Even if produced by technical limitations, such absence is never neutral: in the absence of people to claim the city space, the album argues that nothing stands in the way of urban transformation.

Lastly, even in the villages, photographs in the album were strictly limited to exteriors and large views. Yet the travelogs tell us that, since the houses in Niš were close to the street and opened toward their meticulously tended gardens, we are missing the best part. The reasons could range from technical ones to the distrust of the locals toward the photographic camera (compare Çelik, 2004: 619), but the effect is the same: one of discomfort, disruption, and the outsider status of the one looking through the lens, in spite of the existing power relations, and our own outsider status to the city's past.