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Nomads in Anatolia: Encounters with a Vanishing Culture

By Harald Böhmer
with Josephine Powell
and Serife Atlihan

Foreword by Walter B Denny
Number of pages 320
Number of pictures 542, charts 19, drawings 23.

Remhöb-Verlag

Price
£75 plus £16.10 p&p
US$150 + p&p

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Published to coincide with The Splendour of Anatolia exhibition at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam Feb 2nd to June 1st 2008.

'In this new volume, completed with the collaboration of the legendary photographer and ethnographer Josephine Powell and of Dr Atlihan, and magnificently and profusely illustarted with colour photographs and line drawings, Böhmer has taken his scientific research, and his unparalleled knowledge of Anatolian carpets and kilims, resulting from decades of fieldwork, into a new level of contextualisation within the vanishing nomadic culture' from the foreword by Walter B Denny.

To be reviewed in Cornucopia 39, Spring 2008

Harald Böhmer has produced a beautiful and uplifting testament for his, his wife Renata, and Josephine Powell's interwoven life work - the description and study of the last of the nomads in Turkey.
Their symbiotic study and photography is reminiscent of a Boswell-Johnson relationship, transported into modern media.
Josephine was one of the unrivalled anthropological photographers who did not like writing much. However she was an extraordinary researcher and a focal point for Turkish people who were interested in their own nomadic culture, which is far more popular now than it was then. It is an understatement to say that she was a persistent thinker and loved debate.
In contrast, Harald and Renate additionally had chemists' discipline and methodology. This book is proof that Harald Böhmer is also a great photographer.
 

They made a splendid team and all gained from each other. In the tradition of significant ethnography they made repeated visits to different families and groups of nomads over many years. In addition there was a total commitment and love of Anatolian textiles.
The second part of the book on historical textiles of the Anatolian nomads features over a hundred mainly flatweaves. There are diagrams to show how they are used (for example on a camel); there are close-ups to show the weaving techniques; and how they relate to the modern textiles in use which form an integral part of many of the anthropological pictures in the first part of the book.
The last section has short but profound essays on important questions such as 'Where do kilim patterns come from?'

Excerpt from:
The Camel that Smiled by Robert Chenciner, to be published in Cornucopia 39 Spring 2008

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