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Carrying the same name as the The “Fishermen of Kumkapı” exhibition at the Ara Güler Museum, on view from 8 May – 27 October 2024, takes its starting point from Ara Güler’s series of articles entitled ‘With the Armenian Fishermen of Kumkapı’, published as a seven day serialised report in the Jamanak newspaper from 21 – 27 May 1952.

Ara Güler visits the Kumkapı neighbourhood frequently following the year 1952, capturing the area together with its people, which he knows will disappear. He photographs the fishing boat headmen, the crew, and the merametçi within their daily lives. The harbour and houses in the area will be completely demolished following the beginning of the construction of the Sirkeci-Florya coast road (today’s Kennedy Street) in 1956.

In Ara Koçunyan’s essay entitled “What Are We Doing Here?”, we bear witness to Ara Güler’s relationship with the newspaper in the early days of his career as a photo-journalist. Levon Bağış, on the other hand, presents a look into the historical importance of Kumkapı and its fishing culture in his essay, “What is a City?”.

The book also features ‘Who Were the Captains of Kumkapı?’, the essay penned by Vartan Ozinyan for the last day of the 1952 series, which is being published for the first time in Turkish and English.

Additionally in this exhibition and in the book, unpublished photographs on Kumkapı, various ephemera and contact sheets displaying Ara Güler’s editorial and creative processes are included.