The photographic record of the Ottoman Empire includes a vast and diverse number of official images, assembled into albums for various purposes or kept in palace archives. These comprise an important archive for examining government policies, communication strategies and many other aspects of the political and social history of the empire. But the wide accessibility of photographic technology in the early twentieth century means that the official photograph record is not the only one available to historians. Focusing on a more personal photographic document, this presentation will demonstrate the extent to which the careful study of private assemblages of images may provide a more nuanced view of a historical moment than what is often found in the official record. The subject of this paper is one small and extremely intriguing photograph album from Istanbul. Although it is dated (1919), it comes down to us with no other information about its original owner or the photographer(s) responsible for the pictures it features. However by careful analysis of the individual images, the album as a constructed object, and its context in the history of photography and the historical moment of the city it marks, the album reveals a great deal about the intentions of its owner in creating it. This powerful and captivating assemblage of images also invites us to open a conversation about complicated ideas: representation, memory, and nostalgia at a particular moment in the history of Istanbul. In 1919 Istanbul was occupied by the Allied Forces and the Ottoman Empire had been divided by the victors of the First World War. These circumstances, while not directly referenced in the album’s photographs, are the lens through which we must examine the subjects and arrangement of the images in the album. Considering what has been included on its pages as well as what is omitted allows us to give voice to a personal record of melancholy and loss across a distance of nearly a century.