A man with a water pipe, Late 19th Century
W. Orden (M. Hordet) is cited as one of the most mysterious photographers active in Central Asia at the end of the 19th Century. He is believed to have produced a large body of work covering the Caucassus, Central Asia and Persia. A collection of his work is located in the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna. He adopted a negative numbering system (that has resulted in some images being incorrectly attributed to Antoin Sevruguin) and sometimes signed his prints in both French and Russian. Further details about the photographer can be found in Carmen Perez Gonzalez's "Local Portraiture", published by Leiden University Press in 2012.