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Street Art # 2 Galata

Another arty day around Galata... Graffiti works get disappeared so quickly here so don't expect to see these works of art if you walk around Galata today.

Urban Transformation Projects #2

In the name of regeneration, the old historic neighborhood of Istanbul, Tarlabaşı, will be confined to the memories of Istanbullites very soon. It used to be inhabited mostly by the Greeks since the mid 1800s and by migrants from Anatolia since the 1960s....

From Konstantiniyye to Istanbul

The photo exhibition at the Pera Museum, "From Konstantiniyye to Istanbul" gave me moments of awe and inspiration to keep on working on the city. The selection of photos from various collections reveals the beauty of the Anatolian shore of the Bosphorus...

The dome of Heaven

The dome of Hagia Sophia. During the extensive restoration carried out by Fossatti Brothers in the mid 1800s, the calligrapher Kazasker Izzet Efendi decorated the dome with the verse from Qur'an "In the name of Allah, the beneficient, the merciful,...

Urban Transformation Projects #1

There is this continuous noise wherever you are in the city, which I call the third world noise -not a politically correct way of putting it, but unfortunately you cannot help. Shopping malls not enough. Hotels not enough. Luxury condos not enough. Bridges...

Under the maple trees

If you happen to pay a visit to the charming Emirgan neighborhood in the middle part of the Bosphorus, you will see a fountain surrounded by a hundred-year old colossal maple trees. Commissioned by the Sultan Abdulhamid I and dedicated to one of his wives,...

Street Art # 1 Tophane

Graffiti is no longer considered a kind of vandalism, at least in the art world, and the shift from typography to other forms of symbolic expression is clear in Istanbul, too. I came across these ones in a district, which is going through gentrification...

Fishing

Othmar Pferschy's 1950 dated photos remind us of how once upon a time fishing was indispensible to Istanbul way of life.

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