[In the Mosque of the Damegan/The Eunuchs]

With unique authority, the camera offered nineteenth-century viewers an evocative glimpse of faraway sights and exotic peoples. Luigi Pesce, a Neapolitan who became commander in chief of the Persian infantry in 1848, made photographs depicting both ancient Persian architecture and a living courtly society facing imminent change. On a visit to Damghan, east of Tehran, Pesce met a party of government functionaries whose astrakhan hats were as striking as their beardlessness. Most of the group were eunuchs, sexless males who often attained administrative positions of some prominence in the Qajar dynasty (1779-1924). This rare early photograph of Persia comes from an album donated to the Metropolitan by the late Charles K. Wilkinson, the Museum's former curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art.