A photographic record of daily life in Istanbul from the 1940s to the 1980s. It shows the city's melancholy aesthetic as it oscillates between tradition and modernity.



This book is a vivid photographic record of daily life in Istanbul from the 1940s to the 1980s. Captured through the unerring lens of the award winning Ara Güler, the ‘Eye of Istanbul’, it reflects the city’s melancholy aesthetic as it oscillates between tradition and modernity. Güler’s remarkable duotone photographs are accompanied by evocative commentaries from Orhan Pamuk, another leading figure in Turkish culture. Both writer and photographer each held in their youth the ambition of becoming a painter. Here, each in his own way paints a brushless picture of his hometown and captures, through image and word, its very soul.