Ahmed Vefyk Effendi

A carte-de-visite portrait of Ahmed Vefyk Effendi, the Turkish Ambassador to Paris. Of his diplomatic duties he later wrote 'What I complain of is the mode of life. I am oppressed not by the official duties - they are easy, Turkey has few affairs - but by the social ones. I have had to write fifteen notes this morning, all about trifles.... My liberal friends here complain of the want of political liberty. What I complain of is the want of social liberty; it is far more important. Few people suffer from the despotism of a Government, and those suffer only occasionally. But this social despotism, this despotism of salons, this code of arbitrary little reglements, observances, prohibitions, and exigencies, affects everybody, and every day, and every hour'.

Photographed by Disdéri of Paris.

His name appears as S. Exc. Vefyk Effendi among the Sommités in Disdéri's March 1861 catalogue.