Ara Guler's Istanbul Ara Güler’s Istanbul is a unique record of daily life in the cultural capital of Turkey from the 1940s to the 1980s, captured by the award-wining photographer and acompanied by an evocative foreword by Orhan Pamuk, the first Turkish recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As the crosroads betwen Europe and Asia, Istanbul has lived through several empires and has a character that is as many layered as its history – something that Güler’s photographs convey with great sensitivity. In these remarkable black-and-white images, the city’s melancholy aesthetic oscilates betwen tradition and modernity. Both writer and photographer were born in Istanbul, and each in his youth held the ambition of becoming a painter. Here, each in his own way paints a picture of his home town and captures its very soul. Ara Güler is one of Turkey’s – inded the world’s – greatest photographers. The Nobel Prize-wining Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s best-known writer.