User:Spinster/Josephine Powell

Josephine Powell (15 May 1919 – 19 January 2007) was an American photographer and a collector of ethnographic objects.

Education
Josephine Powell was born in New York City; she also grew up there. Powell attended Cornell University, where she earned a BA in 1941. Next, she attended the New York School for Social Work at Columbia University where she received her master's degree in 1945.

Career
After her graduation, Powell left the United States to start working for the IRRODP (International Refugee and Resettlement Organization for Displaced Persons). First, she worked in Tanganyika, and later in Munich. Josephine Powell also lived in Rome for a long time, during which she worked as an architectural photographer.

International travels (1952-1975)
In the period from 1952 to 1975, Powell travelled the world by car. In many regions, she took photographs of local monuments, of archaeology, of historical and ethnographical subjects and of museum collections. She thus visited and documented Afghanistan, North Africa, Greece, Kashmir, India, Iran, Italy, Nepal, East and West Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. During these travels, she also collected objects that later became part of various museum collections, such as the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam and the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her photographs would appear in more than 150 books and scientific publications.

Turkey
Powell relocated to Istanbul in 1975. From the 1980s, Powell shifted her attention towards nomadic textiles from Turkey. During the last years of her life there, she worked on exhibitions about kilims, reintroduced traditional textile dyeing techniques, and she digitized and updates her personal archive. Many ethnographic artefacts that she collected during that time, are now part of the collections of Sadberk Hanım Museum in Büyükdere, Istanbul.

Powell died in Istanbul, aged 87.

Writings by Powell

 * Böhmer, H., with J. Powell and S ̧. Atlıhan (2008). Nomads in Anatolia: Encounters with a Vanishing Culture, Ganderkesee
 * Mandersloot, G., J. Powell, and R. Bolland Firozkohi (1971). Een Afghaans reisjournaal. Lochem: Museum voor Land- en Volkenkunde

Monographs on Powell

 * Hart, K. (2012). What Josephine Saw. Twentieth Century Photographic Visions of Rural Anatolia, Istanbul: Koç University Press
 * Vos, J. (2008). Josephine Powell (1919-2007). Traveller, Photographer, Collector in the Muslim World, Amsterdam: KIT Publishers
 * Hart, K. (2007). Giving Back the Colours. Josephine Powell Collection, Istanbul: Vehbi Koc Foundation and Sadberk Hanim Museum
 * Hart, K. (2007). Josephine Powell Collection. Kilim Ornekleri: Examples from Kilims, Istanbul: JP Morgan Chase Bank, Vehbi Koç Foundation and Sadberk Hanim Museum