I understand that. As an art historian I know especially orientalist paintings have a great notoriety for being unreliable; it is to such a degree, it became one of the definitive aspects of orientalist european art. It seems artists that travelled "east" for insipration, did not find "east" as "oriental" or "exotic" enough, so they took the artistic licence to a whole new level, like using objects together that had nothing to do with each other, changing architecture, flora and fauna(basically putting Magribi horseshoe arches, palm trees and camels everywhere) as they wished.
But I wouldn't be so quick to trust photographs either. Especially the kinds of photos taken in studios. Let me give you some context: Photography came really early to Ottoman empire, earlier than even most European countries and it spread like wild fire. There were photo studios in almost every city, even some towns. studio of Abdullah Brothers(Frers Abdullah) of Istanbul being the most famous.
And almost all studios had a very large costume department. Customers, usually Western tourists, used to come to these studios to be photographed with those local exotic "oriental" clothes and props in front of painted fake background, making their visits immortalized. Also postcards were made for purchase in these studios, and again, local people were paid to wear different costumes and their photos were taken, being sold under titles like "an oriental harem woman" or "a notorious zeibek" something fancy and exotic like that.
And as you can imagine, those costumes and props were designed to be fancy, colourful, exotic,intesersting. And many were mismatched, from different eras/places were worn together: a circassian overcoat with a Moroccan fez, or a Bosnian jacket with a Turkistani fur hat and a black sea yatagan etc.
So most people in those Zeybek photos are likely either tourists or just amateur models, instead of the real deal.
