Ara Güler’s photographs meet with short stories in new book

ISTANBUL

A new book titled “We Will Live After Babylon” brings together the short stories Ara Güler penned during his early period and his photographs. 

Güler is known internationally as a photographer and is considered the most important representative of creative photography in Turkey. But he is a relative unknown as a short story writer, and the various aspects of Güler the writer appear in breathtaking range in “We Will Live After Babylon.” 

This new edition of three simultaneously published volumes in Turkish, Armenian and English brings together Güler’s visual production with his texts, which appear to also take photographs through the medium of the short story, to form a “photograph-short story album.” 

Güler thinks that his early period short stories have an important role in his ability to “capture meaningful moments and combine them in a narrative” and describes these 13 short stories as “a kind of photography.” 

Güler, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, opened hundreds of exhibitions across the world and published tens of books. He took photographs of many world-famous figures, including Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Arnold Toynbee, Pablo Picasso, William Saroyan and Salvador Dali, as well as leading artists of Turkey, whom he also conducted interviews with.