Medycyna i misje protestanckie w przedrewolucyjnym Iranie. Narracja fotograficzna

The article aims to show the significance of photography in studying the history of the Protestant medical missions in Iran. It focuses on the mission initiatives carried out by the Presbyterians, Anglicans and a small missionary enterprise launched by the Lutheran Orient Mission addressed to Kurds in Iran. The article attempts to cover the period from the 1880s when the first mission hospital run by a Presbyterian missionary Joseph Plumb Cochran was established in Urmia to the eve of the Islamic Republic in 1979 when the last Christian Hospital in Qorve was shut down. However, the article is not intended to present the whole history of medical missions, rather it seeks to reveal various contexts in which photography appeared and was used by missionaries, donors, supporters, or more generally by individuals and institutions. Moreover, the article tries to determine possibilities that the photography research brings to understanding the medical missions conducted by Protestants in Iran, presuming that the study of photography 1) leads to understanding the bureaucratic structure of a given mission; 2) gives an idea of how photography in the mission filed became a cultural practice; 3) is the key to missionary imagination.