Shafaqna English- Photo of Mashhad Al-Kadhimiyyah and Religious Dignitaries in front of the Entrance Portal shown. The photo is estimated to be taken a time between 1880-1930 and is held by the National Museum of Asian Art in Baghdad, Iraq.
According to Shafaqna, the creator of this work is Sevruguin, Antoin, 1851-1933, one of the early pioneers of commercial photography in Iran. He came to Iran from Tbilisi, Georgia, in the mid-1870s to set up a shop on Alaa-doleh Street in Tehran. Sevruguin’s studio was trusted by the Qajar court and foreign visitors to Iran from the very beginning.
Sevruguin’s photographs of ‘ethnic groups’, architecture and landscapes, and images of daily life in Tehran, highly regarded outside Iran for their artistic genius, found their way into foreign travelogues, magazines and books. He thus stands alone in a relatively large group of early Iranian photographers who were recognised and celebrated outside the country’s borders. Antoine Sevruguin died in 1933, leaving behind only part of his large collection of glass negatives, which are now held in the archives of the Freer Art Gallery and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
19th century clock tower
Below you can also see an image of the 19th century clock tower over the south entrance portal of the Kadhimiyah Shrinen in Baghdad, Iraq:
Here is another photo of Al-Kadhimiyyah taken in 1955:
Source: Smithsonian, Researchgate, Alamy