Through her transparent veil, a purported "Turkish lady" gazes coyly past the camera. Studio portraits were often carefully staged, the models wearing an assortment of their own clothes combined with costumes and props belonging to the photographer. In one instance, the Khedive Ismail gave the Viennese painter Carl Huber the old Musaffir Khan palace in Cairo as a studio. Huber and his friend then proceeded to employ female Egyptian street vendors as models. Their special interest was creating photographs that gave life to Western harem fantasies, and one of Huber's guests noted that the women soon ran about the palace dressing and behaving just like a fancier of the Arabian Nights would wish. All of the surviving studio portraits by Zangaki are considerably more tame. Signed at lower left "Zangaki"; caption at lower right "Nr. 805 Femme turque"

• Wet collodion on glass
• 23.5 x 29.5 cm
• $425.00