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“What we see when we examine one of his portrait photographs is not the sitter as filtered through the personality of Ara Güler: rather, it is Ara Güler’s personality as filtered through the sitter. Thus, we are led to the conclusion that in the endlessly absorbing photographs of Istanbul you are holding in your hand, Ara Güler is Istanbul itself. In any case, the person who is Ara Güler is nothing other than Istanbul. The exuberant richness of a city thousands of years old – a fusion of turquoise and gold – finds itself reflected, almost in its entirety, in Ara’s personality. That little girl smiling among the tombstones, those moss-covered slabs of marble, that old man sitting in a coffee-house deep in thought, that boat with its freshly-caulked hull, that Bosphorus ferryboat whose lights are gradually dimming as it sails away into the distance, that garbage collector, that tinker, that greengrocer, that migrant, that seller of hand-painted kerchiefs, that wooden house, that alley, that street – all of these are Ara Güler himself.”

Onat Kutlar