Mining Modernism in Photographs from Imperial Khiva and Turkestan: Xudoybergan Devonov’s Experiments with the “Type”

Xudoybergan Devonov (1879–1940), currently celebrated as a pioneer of cinema in Uzbekistan, also produced photographs that challenged the repressive patterns of photographing the peoples and cultures of Central Asia. Devonov’s early photographs experimented with the pictorial conventions promoted by “type” photographs and orientalist paintings that were widely disseminated throughout the Russian Empire.