Lost Villages of the Upper Euphrates: A Digital Archive

This project will digitize and make openly accessible approximately 2,400 slides created between 1970 and 1990 in the Upper Euphrates region of southeast Türkiye. The slides form a unique ethnographic record of traditional ways of life in ‘lost’ villages flooded during construction of the Keban and Karakaya hydroelectric dams. The slides are accompanied by handwritten notes describing aspects of village life depicted in the images, providing invaluable context and metadata. Due to age and inappropriate storage, the slides are already showing signs of irreversible damage, and this project will ensure that this important and irreplaceable material is not lost.