Purpose. This page shows, on six cases, how a research question is asked and what the evidence allows: each dossier gives the question, the evidence, the conclusion and what remains open. The step-by-step account is in the Journal, the literature in the Bibliography, the method in Methods and Debates. These are the project’s research notes, not peer-reviewed papers; the four degrees of certainty are explained in Methods and Debates.

01. A camera bought later than the textbooks say

The date 1905, repeated in institutional chronologies, for the first Camera 300 film (the one with Ianaki’s grandmother Despa at Avdela) conflicts with a glass negative in the State Archives in Bitola: Ianaki outside the Criterion Theatre in London, where The Liars ran from 13 April to 15 October 1907. If that was the trip on which he bought the camera, the film dates from 1907; the photograph proves a visit, not a purchase. The argument is set out in Methods and Debates (section 3) and in the Journal.

02. 1911: the Romanian delegation and the film behind several titles

Films catalogued under different place names (Bitola, Gopesh, Resen) may be sequences of one visit by the Romanian delegation in 1911. Marian Țuțui shows that the Romanian edit, Excursie în Macedonia turcească, joins them through Romanian intertitles, while other catalogues keep them apart. An event, a camera roll, an edited film, an archival unit and a DVD chapter are different things, even if they carry different titles for almost the same images. The 1911 delegation is not the military delegation of 1909 (Colmar von der Goltz) nor the sultan Mehmed V Reşad’s visit. What remains is a frame-by-frame comparison of all surviving versions.

03. Ioannina before the film

From Romanian-language school records, the press and the bibliography of photography, Nikolaos Siokis reconstructed Ianaki’s beginnings: the first studio in Ioannina, opened in 1898 (the literature gives two dates, 18 February and 29 March), Milton joining as partner a few months later, and Ianaki teaching drawing and calligraphy at a Romanian school. Greek newspapers of the time sometimes describe the brothers with hostility, which makes them a useful source on their public role but not a neutral biography. The Ioannina years are the formation of a complete photographic practice, not a preparation for cinema. The studio’s address, the number of surviving plates and the identity of the sitters remain open.

04. Mustafa Kemal in the archive: an identification shown

Two images long read as Mustafa Kemal at military school were re-examined; physiognomy and context point to another person, identified by the project as İsmail Enver, later Enver Pasha. In the plates of the 1909 visit linked to Colmar von der Goltz, the project recognises a young officer as Mustafa Kemal in two frames. The identification was tested by an independent forensic physiognomy examination by Aurelian Bădulescu, which confirms it. An inherited archive label stays a hypothesis until it is checked; here the old label is kept next to the new one. Still to be published: the whole photographic sequence, the negatives’ identifiers and the written expert report. See the Journal.

05. The photograph, the village and the chance to correct

A panorama catalogued as Plovdiv was relocated to Sliven by comparison with the relief and the surviving buildings. At Laista, the buildings visible and absent in the early panorama helped villagers fix 1898. At Plovdiv, the framed portraits behind Ianaki were matched with surviving portraits and studio signatures. None of these matches was automatic: they took visits, local history and physical comparison. Comparative photography then becomes a method of verification: a wrong caption gives way before the ground, while local memory must itself be attributed and corroborated. A different lens, height or framing can spoil a match, so verified fixed points are kept apart from approximate correspondences. See the Journal.

06. A Balkan archive in several histories

The brothers were born at Avdela in the Ottoman Balkans and worked in places that have since passed through changing regimes and borders. After their deaths, several states and cultural traditions claimed the images, and the question of whose pioneers they were became more visible than many questions about the images themselves. The debate is documented in different national idioms (Stardelov, Christodoulou, Țuțui, Özen, and more recently Grgić, Mademli, Guštin and Siokis). A state may legitimately protect the material in its institutions; that does not make the images the property of a single narrative. “Ottoman”, “Aromanian”, “Romanian-educated”, “Greek”, “Macedonian”, “Albanian” and “Turkish” describe layers that do not exclude one another. The project shows them side by side and does not trade one national monopoly for another.

Corrections, new images with documented provenance and bibliographic additions are welcome, including those that challenge the interpretations here. The notes were written in October 2026 and have not been peer-reviewed.