Word photography in downtown Istanbul

At the Barbaros Square near the Beşiktaş ferry station, a neighborhood in central Istanbul, you should definitely go and see the world photographs exhibited in containers.

The name of the exhibition is “Cities and Stories.” It will be open until Nov. 18.

With a system such as this, many artistic activities can be held. The local municipality can easily use Barbaros Square for similar activities.

In the foreword of the catalog prepared for the exhibition, Beşiktaş Mayor Murat Hazinedar wrote they have organized this exhibition on the occasion of the 175th year of photography.

Festival Coordinator Utku Kaynar explained the content of Fotoistanbul 2014 to us. Art Director of Fotoistanbul 1st International Photography Festival, Gültekin Çizgen, while writing the features of the festival, also answered the question as to why it was named “Cities and Stories.”

“Actually, photography was born together with the city where modern industrialization was born. When this historic period is reviewed, we can say photography and sociology are brothers and sisters. Thus, photography, since its birth, has been fed by the city; it has witnessed all the pains, contradictions and changes of the modern bourgeois city and society.” 

The reason why the main theme of the festival is “Cities and Stories” wrote Çizgen, was that the above mentioned issues and dynamics have been visually presented by photographers, conveying that the problems encountered in different cities of the world were actually all of our joint problems. Çizgen also wrote, “Nobody should have any doubt that they will find in the exhibitions their own stories in the exclusion, gentrification, tension, estrangement, architectural distortions, contradictions and many other phenomena that happens in cities.”

The curators of the exhibition are Attila Durak, Jason Eskenazi and Hüseyin Yılmaz.  

Selected photographers’ biographies are present in two languages, in Turkish and in English. You can watch various segments of city life in these photographs from the cities of these Turkish and foreign photographers.

Images from the cities show that there are similar pictures in different geographies. We can all see shared frames in the cities we live.

I can also see the studies of universities in this exhibition. Go and see the Berlin and other photographs by Bahçeşehir University students.

When you look at our photographers’ photographs, you will recognize that their lenses have caught what you have missed in your daily life. Several types of people, many people who are right next to you will pop out in this exhibition.

Several panels have been held during the Fotoistanbul exhibition. Some of the topics are Education Models of the Photographer, Urbanization and Photography, Censorship, Yıldız Albums, Where is Photography Heading? From Photography to Photography Book, New Media and Photojournalism, Social Effect Photo, New Media and Street Photography.

People who are included in the “Conversations with Masters” section are William Klein, Ozan Sağdıç, Thomas Roma, Murat Germen, Ken Schles, Yusuf Darıyerli, Christopher Anderson and Seifj Kurata.

Collections included in the catalog are Banu Vargı Tümay Collection, Beşiktaş Municipality Beltaş, Serdar Bilgili Collection, Mehmet Bayhan Collection, Sinan Kafadar Collection, Suna İnan Kıraç Foundation Collection.

The exhibition in the containers of Barbaros Square reflect the confusion of our daily lives and the story of our cities.