In the second half of the 19th century, Iran was at a crossroads. The pull between Eastern tradition and Western modernization was a negotiation being experienced in many places. But for Persia, a prosperous empire in many ways defined by its strategic geography at the center of east-west nexus, the stakes were particularly high.

Cue despot shah Naser al-Din. The third longest reigning king in Iranian history was a self-serving nepotite who executed his reform-oriented prime minister in 1852 only to turn his back on modernization while granting shortsighted concessions to European colonial powers. Al-Din was the kind of ruler who inspired action: he was assassinated in 1896 by a follower of anti-imperialist Islamist Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī. But the shah also had a keen interest in European technology and art. He was the first Persian king to be photographed, and he established a staff of official court photographers to document his governance.

Portrait of Persian woman. (Antoin Sevruguin/Smithsonian)

Antoin Sevruguin was one of those photographers. His work offers some of the earliest pictures of both royal and common lives in Iran. And though many of his images are crafted to celebrate traditional Persian culture and costumes, that he is engaging with these scenes with a modern Western technology is significant. We see Iran through the eyes of a person illustrating the past with a view for the future. Also of note is Sevruguin’s use of rudimentary yet effective retouching techniques. Interior walls and skies in many pictures are masked to appear bright white—facial features are often softened and smoothed.

In 1907, the majority of Sevruguin’s work was accidentally destroyed in a campaign led by his patron’s grandson—the sitting Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar—to squelch constitutionalist uprising. Of the remaining 2,000 negatives, many were subsequently confiscated decades later by reform-minded Reza Shah Pahlavi, who took power in a 1925 coup. He thought they made Iran look too traditional.

Photos from the Antoin Sevruguin collection at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries.