Ara Güler's Photography of ‘Old Istanbul’ and Cosmopolitan Nostalgia
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03087290903361373
ISSN2150-7295
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Turkish Studies
ResumoAbstract Based on Ara Güler's photographs of Istanbul, this paper explores the relationship between nostalgia and photography in the city. Most of Güler's best known photographs were taken in the 1950s and 1960s while he was working as a photojournalist for the print press. The re-coding of a selection of his black and white images since the 1990s as art photography and in the pursuit of recalling 'Old Istanbul' as a cosmopolitan city presents a revealing case. Güler's recruitment as a photojournalist in the 1950s was a result of the expansion and modernisation of the city's print press, which itself was a response to dramatic transformations in the city, such as massive rural-to-urban migration and urban renewal and expansion. Güler's pictures from this era are typically of the urban poor and working classes. Focusing on two journalistic narratives co-produced by Güler – one in 1959 for the illustrated journal Hayat, and the other in 1969 for the daily Akşam – this paper asks why and how only images from the latter circulate today. It argues that contemporary urban discourses influence how we interpret these old photographs now. Keywords: Ara Güler (1928–present)IstanbulTurkeynostalgiamemorycosmopolitanismprint pressphotojournalismstreet photographycity photographsrural-to-urban migrants and working classes in photographyminoritiesmigration A postdoctoral fellowship from Brown University provided time to write this essay. I presented an early version at the 2007 World Congress of Aesthetics in Ankara. I am indebted to Nezar AlSayyad, Greig Crysler, Deniz Göktürk, Gökçe Kinayoğlu, Douglas Nickel, Graham Smith, Cihan Tuğal, the students of my course 'Urban Modernity and the Middle East', and colleagues at the Cogut Center for the Humanities Fellows' Seminars who read drafts, and provided invaluable feedback and critiques that contributed immensely to my thinking about Güler's photographs. Notes 1 – Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic 2001, xiii. 2 – Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press 2004, 14. 3 – Ara Güler, A Photographical Sketch on Lost Istanbul, Istanbul: Dünya Yayınları 2008 (7th ed. published in both Turkish and English). 4 – Photographs by Ara Güler and introduction by Enis Batur, İstanbul'un Son Şairi Ara Güler [Istanbul's Last Poet, Ara Güler], Istanbul: Yapı Kredi 2003. This catalogue was produced by Yapı Kredi Bank as a 'gift to personal banking customers'. 5 – 'Ara Güler'den, Belediye'ye sergi tepkisi', CNNTurk (6 March 2008). 6 – Orhan Pamuk and Maureen Freely (trans.), Istanbul: Memories and the City, 1st American ed., New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2005, 234. Orhan Pamuk, İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir, İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık 2003. 7 – Ibid. 8 – Ibid., 83. 9 – Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors: Essays and a Story, New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2007, 369. When asked 'in Istanbul […] you seem to mourn the loss of the Ottoman Empire', Pamuk responds, 'I'm not mourning the Ottoman Empire. I'm a Westernizer. I'm pleased that the Westernization process took place. I'm just criticizing the limited way in which the ruling elite – meaning both the bureaucracy and the new rich – had conceived of Westernization'. 10 – Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Studies in Modernity and National Identity), Seattle: University of Washington Press 2001, 67. 11 – I thank Graham Smith for bringing to my attention Gabriel Koureas's work on Pamuk's use of photography and photographic terms in Istanbul, in a paper entitled 'Istanbul: Memories of a City (2005): Orhan Pamouk's Melancholic Narrative'. This was delivered at the 'The Photobook' conference organised in Birkbeck College, University of London (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hafvm/research/photobook). 12 – Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1977, 51–82, this reference 71. 13 – Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City, 38. 14 – Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, New York: Columbia University Press 2004. 15 – Pierre Nora, 'Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire', Representations, 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989), 7–24. 16 – Siegfried Kracauer, 'Photography' (1927), in The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press 1995, 47–63, this reference 50. Quoted in Batchen, Forget Me Not, 16. 17 – Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Vintage 1982, 91. Quoted in Batchen, Forget Me Not, 15. 18 – Batchen, Forget Me Not, 98. 19 – Many cities are undergoing similar processes. The following works explore Damascus in Syria and Harbin in China: Christa Salamandra, A New Old Damascus Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria, Indiana Series in Middle East Studies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2004; and Yukiko Koga, '"The Atmosphere of a Foreign Country" Harbin's Architectural Inheritance', in Consuming the Entrepreneurial City: Image, Memory, Spectacle, ed. Anne M. Cronin and Kevin Hetherington, New York: Routledge 2008, 221–53. 20 – Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 75. 21 – These terms may be used interchangeably, but their frame of reference in scholarly literature is quite different – the objective of multiculturalism is 'to satisfy ethnic and cultural minorities within the state', while cosmopolitanism refers to a world citizenship that transcends the borders of the nation-state. Craig Calhoun, 'Belonging in the Cosmopolitan Imaginary', Ethnicities 3:4 (2003), 531–68. Pheng Cheah, Bruce Robbins, and Social Text Collective, Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press 1998. Daniele Archibugi and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Debating Cosmopolitics, London and New York: Verso 2003. 22 – Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory, 18. 23 – Benton Jay Komins, 'Depopulated Cosmopolitanism: The Cultures of Integration, Concealment, and Evacuation in Istanbul', Comparative Literature Studies 39:4 (2002), 360–85. Amy Mills, 'Boundaries of the Nation in the Space of the Urban: Landscape and Social Memory in Istanbul', Cultural Geographies 13:7 (2006), 367–94. İlay Romain Örs, The Last of the Cosmopolitans? Rum Polites of Istanbul in Athens: Exploring the Identity of the City, Harvard University 2006 . 24 – Nebil Özgentürk, Ara Güler, (Biographic Documentary Film), Istanbul: Boyut 1999. 25 – Can Kozanoğlu, Pop Cağı Ateşi, 3rd ed, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları 1995. Rıfat Bali, Tarz-i Hayattan Life Style'a: Yeni Seçkinler, Yeni Mekanlar, Yeni Yaşamlar [From Ways of Living to Lifestyle], Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları 2002, 134–41. 26 – Stephen Kinzer, 'Turkey's Passionate Interpreter to the World', The New York Times (13 April 1997), 39. 27 – Ibid. 28 – Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty and Thomas Y. Levin, Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2008. 29 – Edibe Dolu, 'Periodical Press in Turkey', International Communication Gazette 10 (1964). 30 – It is surprising that there are few scholarly sources on the history of journalism in Turkey. Memoirs of journalists continue to serve as primary sources of information. A classic work is Ahmet Oktay, Toplumsal Değişme ve Basın: 1960–1986 Türk Basını Üzerine Bir Çalışma [Social Change and Press: 1960–1986 A Study on Turkish Press], Turkey: Bilim/Felsefe/Sanat Yayınları 1987. Recently, Yapı Kredi Bank's press YKY printed two monographs on famous newspapers: Nurhan Kavaklı, Bir Gazetenin Tarihi: Akşam [The History of a Newspaper: Akşam], Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayıncılık 2003; and Aysun Köktener, Bir Gazetenin Tarihi: Cumhuriyet [The History of a Newspaper: Cumhuriyet], Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayıncılık 2004. 31 – Seyit Ali Ak, Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türk Fotoğrafı (1923–1960) [Early Republican Period Turkish Photography, 1923–1960], Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi 2001, 181. 32 – Ibid. 33 – Engin Özdeş, Photography in Turkey, Istanbul: Pamukbank and History Foundation 1999, 26. 34 – For the history of history of American photojournalism and the work of Life magazine, see Erika Doss (ed.), Looking at Life Magazine, Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press 2001; Wendy Kozol, Life's America, Family and Nation in Postwar Photojournalism, Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1994; and Marianne Fulton, Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America, Boston: Little, Brown 1988. 35 – Author's translation of the following caption: 'Burnun Dibinde: Şehir nizamını, vatandaş haklarını ve sağlığını, cemiyet problemlerini ilgilendiren kararların, yasakların pek çoğu yukarıda resmi görülen Belediye Sarayı içerisindeki idareciler tarafından yürütülür. Resimde görüldüğü gibi, sahipleri tarafından götürülen inekler Belediye'nin önünden ağır ağır geçiyorlar'. Yeni İstanbul (2 Ağustos 1962). 36 – Cumhuriyet (5 March 1960). 37 – Hayat's covers featured most typically celebrities and photographic images of Istanbul's vistas and scenic spots. This particular issue of Hayat provided its readers with a double-page spread 'touristic map' of the city while most of its readers were already located in Istanbul. 38 – The first installment appeared in Hayat, no. 1, vol. 1 (169th issue) on 1 January 1960. The following issues appeared on 8 January 1960 and 15 January 1960. In a recent memoir/biography, Ara Güler states that Adnan Menderes' government – which was overthrown by the military coup of 27 May 1960 – interfered with the Taşlıtarla 'röportaj' (interview) because it revealed that the government tolerated the informal occupation of the land in exchange for election votes. Nezih Tavlaş, 'Taşlıtarla Gecekondularinda' [In the Taşlıtarla Squatter Houses], in Fotomuhabiri Ara Güler'in Yaşam Hikayesi [The Life Story of Photojournalist Ara Güler], Istanbul: Fotografevi 2009, 97–99. 39 – Erika Doss, 'Introduction: Looking at Life: Rethinking America's Favorite Magazine, 1936–1972', in Doss, Looking at Life Magazine, 8. 40 – Taşlıtarla originated as a state-sponsored resettlement community for Bulgarian Turks immigrating to Turkey (1953–1954) due to assimilationist policies there. The Bulgarian Turks were joined by rural-to-urban migrants from Anatolia. Taşlıtarla soon grew into a squatter settlement. At the time of the production of the essay, the issue of migration was complicated by issues of national identity and rights to the city. Migrants from the Balkans were allocated land and sometimes basic housing units, but migrants from Anatolia were totally left on their own. 41 – Çetin Altan and Ara Güler, 'Al İşte Istanbul', Akşam (26 May 1969). Photographs and text reproduced in Çetin Altan, Al İşte İstanbul, Istanbul: YKY (1998) 2005. 42 – Altan, Al İşte İstanbul, 2005, 169. 43 – Altan and Güler, 'Al İşte Istanbul', 1. 44 – Güler admits that the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) had a tremendous influence on his own. Cartier-Bresson's first collection was Images à la Sauvatte (1952, 'Pictures on the Run' as it translates from French or 'The Decisive Moment' as it was published). He was one of the co-founders of the famous Magnum Photo Agency (1947–present) in Paris, and is known for developing the style that came to be known as 'street photography'. Henri Cartier-Bresson and E. Tériade, The Decisive Moment, New York and Paris: Simon and Schuster 1952. 45 – Çetin Altan, Bir Uçtan Bir Uca ve Al İşte İstanbul, İstanbul: Kitapçılık Ticaret Ltd Şirketi 1970. Çetin Altan, Al İşte İstanbul, İstanbul: Yazko 1980. 46 – This is the enabling effect of 'prosthetic memory'. Furthering the metaphor of prosthesis, Celia Lury argues that there is a shift from aesthetic culture to 'prosthetic culture', from plural society, ordered by variety, to post-plural society, ordered by diversity, and in which the self as possessive individual is being replaced by the experimental self, for the narration of which media representations, especially photographs, provide an archival source. Celia Lury, Prosthetic Culture: Photography, Memory, and Identity, New York: Routledge 1998.
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