ARA GULERS ISTANBUL

Ara Güler's Istanbul is a unique record of daily life in the culturalcapital of Turkey from the 1940s to the 1980s, captured by theaward-winning photographer and accompanied by an evocative foreword byOrhan Pamuk, the first Turkish recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Istanbul has lived throughseveral empires and has a character that is as many layered as its history- something that Güler's photographs convey with great sensitivity. Inthese remarkable black-and-white images, the city's melancholy aestheticoscillates between tradition and modernity. Both writer and photographerwere born in Istanbul, and each in his youth held the ambition of becominga painter. Here, each in his own way paints a picture of his home town andcaptures its very soul.