Bound photograph album containing 48 photographs taken by Sir Percy Moleworth Sykes during his travels in a mountainous region of Central Asia, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, with his sister, Ella Sykes. The gelatin silver prints measure approximately 4 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches and are window-mounted two to a page with calligraphic captions in white ink. Subjects include landscapes, strategic buildings such as forts and trading posts, and local Uighur, Beg, Kyrgyz, and Kazak people and their dwellings and animals, as well as British, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese people and officials. Specific locations in captions include Kashgar, the Tuman River, Yarkand, Khotan, Merkit, Bulunkul, the Pamirs, Tashkurgan, Muztagh Ata, Karakul lake, Tian Shan mountains, and Osh. The images are large, crisp, and rich with detail, offering views of a remote area and its culture during tensions in the decades following the Russo-Turkish War.
The photograph album, Photographs taken by Lt. Col. Sir Percy Sykes to illustrate Chinese Turkestan, the Russian Pamirs and Osh, April-November, 1915 was received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library as a purchase in 2018.
