Vasily Vereshchagin (1842 -1904) was a Russian soldier, painter and traveller. He was born to a lesser noble family and sent to the Tsarskoe Selo military academy in 1850, 8 years old. in 1853, 11 years old he joined the Sea Cadet Corps in St Petersburg. He graduated in 1861 but left military service to attend the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. In 1863 he won a medal from the academy for his Ulysses Slaying the Suitors. In 1864, he went to Paris, 22 years old, where he studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1867 he was invited to accompany General Konstantin Kaufman's expedition to Turkestan. He was granted the rank of ensign. His heroism at the siege of Samarkand from June 2-8, 1868 resulted an award of the Cross of St George (4th class). Having jointed the diplomatic corps, Vereshchagin was posted throughout Central Asia, and his artistic skills matured. In 1871 he set up a studio in Munich and it was here the initial "Turkestan Series" was painted.

This book illuminates the crucial role photography played from the very beginning of the Russian colonial presence in Central Asia and its entanglement with the orientalist legacy that followed. Inessa Kouteinikova examines these under-studied materials while also addressing the photographic market and reception of photography in the Russian Empire, the position of the popular press, the place of public exhibitions and emergence of the first ethnographic museums that took pace from Moscow to Tashkent during the time of the Russian conquest. This book embraces the dominant mode for representing the new colonial territories in the mid-late-19th-century Russia, by outlining the technical, commercial and artistic milieus during the Golden Age of Russian orientalism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of photography and Russian studies.