Luigi Pesce and the First Photographic Encounters with Persepolis

Luigi Pesce, an Italian officer turned pioneering photographer, entered the cultural landscape of nineteenth-century Iran at a moment when the world of visual documentation was rapidly expanding. Born in Naples in 1827, he initially trained as a military officer in the service of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where he learned cartography, surveying, and the disciplined observational skills that later shaped his photographic work. His assignment to Iran in the mid-nineteenth century brought him into contact with a country eager to modernize and curious about the visual technologies emerging across Europe. Pesce’s combination of technical discipline and artistic sensitivity made him an ideal figure to help introduce early photography to Qajar Iran.