The number "95" in white ink appears on recto in what is probably Antoin Sevruguin's hand.
Provenance
This photograph forms part of a group that is believed to have belonged to Earl Thomas Crain (1907-1989), an American foreign service officer who was stationed in Iran from 1935. The group of photographs are believed to have been originally acquired by the father of Crain’s wife, Elizabeth Agnes Hildebrand, who was an honorary council for Switzerland in Iran after the first world war.
Publications
Page 341 of “Persia Past and Present” by A.V. Williams Jackson which was published by The Macmillan Company in London in 1906. The print is not attributed to Antoin Sevruguin and titled “Opium smokers”.
The same image appears on page 90 of "Sevruguin's Iran" published by Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn & Co's Uitgeversmaatschappij in Rotterdam and Zaman Publishers in Tehran.
The image is reproduced on page 61 of Volume I of “Du Khorassan au pays des Backhtiaris: trois mois de voyage en Perse” by Henry-Rene D’Allemagne published in 1911 by Hachette, Paris, France. The image is titled "Interieur d'une fumerie d'opium".