A photography book by Armen T. Marsoobian, an Armenian-American professor has hit the shelves with a ceremony attended by booklovers in Istanbul on Tuesday, January 12, Today's Zaman reports.

Some four years in the making, the bilingual Turkish-English photography book, produced by the initiative of the Birzamanlar Publishing House, is now ready to enter the libraries of Turkish bookworms.

“This book is just one moment in a long labor of love that I started many years ago,” Marsoobian said in a speech he delivered at the celebration of the book's launching. “It first began as a private journey in the 1980s. My uncle gave me the collection of photographs, the family archive. And for many years I only shared these photos with family members at family reunions and gatherings. I realized that the family had made great efforts to document and record their lives in Ottoman Turkey. And in one way they were trying to keep the memory of the Armenian community alive and therefore would have been very pleased to make this public.”

Marsoobian's book features the story of his forebears, the Dildilian family, who documented their lives in Sivas, Merzifon and Samsun and the surrounding areas from the second half of the 19th century, a period that was full of suffering for Armenians. In the book, from his family archives, the professor presents drawings, maps and photographs that go back as early as 1888.

The historic photos in the book contribute to our imagination of Armenian daily life at that time, the old and rare photographs of places, people and situations (e.g. camel caravans, college workshops, weddings, etc.) concretize a past that is long over and visually under-documented, Today’s Zaman says.