Though best known for photographs of Istanbul, Ara Güler’s catalogue of more than 800,000 prints is also rich in images of landscapes and archaeological ruins, such as those he documented in Anatolia (Turkey’s Asian heartland) in the early 1960s. Throughout both groups of images, Güler manages to capture vanishing worlds. In Istanbul, traditional life is replaced by rapid development and urbanization, while in Anatolia the enemy is time, as illustrated by the crumbling of ancient monuments.
Güler sees himself as a visual historian who captures the life of his city as it undergoes change. His Istanbul has been the scene of popular protests, including the Taksim Square Massacre in 1977, a Labor Day rally that spurred clashes between political parties. More recently, he captured this past summer’s protests in Taksim Square about the proposed development of nearby Gezi Park, which elicited fear about the disappearance of Istanbul’s cultural heritage. Though more than twenty-five years apart, Güler captured both protests in dramatic photographs that verge on the cinematic.
Despite the popularity of his images of Istanbul, Güler feels his real contributions to human history are his photographs of archaeological and historical sites. The diverse architecture of Anatolia not only features different traditions and styles, but it also represents the fusing of religions and peoples over thousands of years. Compared to his photographs of Istanbul, these quiet, often unpeopled images are universal meditations on time and history.
Today, Güler often can be found just a few blocks from Taksim Square in a café that occupies space below his archive. He always carries a camera with him, ready to add to the archive that contains hundreds of thousands of his images, including those of Antatolian architecture. A selection of these will be featured in the Sackler exhibition In Focus: Ara Güler’s Anatolia, opening on December 14.
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