Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran – Antoin Sevruguin
Antoin Sevruguin managed and operated one of the most successful commercial photography studios inTehran, Iran, in the late 19th century. Born in the 1840s in Iran, Sevruguin’s mother returned with her children to her hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia, after his father Vassil, a Russian diplomat in Iran, died in a horse-riding accident. Trained as a painter, Sevruguin returned to Iran in the early 1870s accompanied by his two brothers, establishing a photography studio first in Tabriz and then Tehran. His studio’s ties to Tbilisi, however, persisted through the years; many of the early portraits of dervishes and women have been simultaneously attributed to Antoin Sevruguin and Dimitri Yermakov, the Georgian photographer who is often referred to as Sevruguin’s mentor from Tbilisi.