The album contains 74 photographs taken during the three-month sojourn French photographer Paul Nadar made in Turkistan (present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) when he was invited to exhibit at the 1890 Tashkent Exhibition. Nadar's images capture everyday scenes and people in the streets and environs of Samargand, Tashkent, Bukhoro, Mary (near the ancient site of Merv), and the Murghab steppe. Included are photographs depicting people and activities in and around bazaars and mosques, camel caravans, and local methods of transportation. Several scenes show a falconry contest and a baigue, a strategic horse race run over rugged terrain.

Paul Nadar (1856-1939) inherited the Nadar portrait studio in Paris from his father, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, the innovative photographer, caricaturist, and writer, who went by the pseudonym Nadar (which he adopted at age 18 in 1838). As the only child of Félix and Ernestine Nadar, and the nephew of artist-photgrapher Adrien Tournachon, Paul Nadar grew up in the bohemian milieu of Belle Époque Paris. He was devoted to the business, and by the early 1870s was already working both behind the camera and helping Ernestine Nadar to run the business side of the studio which had moved from 35 boulevard des Capucines to 57 rue d'Anjou. By 1880, Paul Nadar was running the studio and shifting its business model from the artistic aesthetic his father's portraiture was known for to the more conventional studio aesthetics of the time which relied on elaborate studio furniture, props, and backdrops that attracted a wider clientele. While this change, along with the the adoption of more profitable production methods, gave the studio a more secure financial footing than it had ever had under his father, it also caused a considerable rift between the two men.

1.25 Linear Feet (74 photographs on 37 mounts)

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