In Search of Lost Time

Known as the ‘Eye of Istanbul’, Ara Güler may be best known outside his native Turkey for the iconic images featured in Orhan Pamuk’s memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, which beautifully illustrate the notion of hüzün (a sort of nostalgic longing) so prevalent throughout the book. Güler does not consider himself an artist, but rather a photojournalist – a distinction he believes is rooted in the importance of observation.

Accordingly, an exhibition of his photographs at Washington D.C.’s Freer and Sackler Galleries of Asian Art featuring 21 black and white silver gelatine prints taken in 1965 asks viewers to consider Güler’s distinction between observation and art, challenging his assertion that photographers capture truth, while artists create works of fiction. More interestingly, however, a close examination of the photographs of Armenian and Seljuk ruins from Anatolia preserved in the gallery’s archives reveals a complex historical narrative of the country.

The exhibition, co-curated by Freer and Sackler’s Nancy Micklewright and students from John Hopkins University comprises a collection of Güler’s photographs donated to the Smithsonian by Raymond Hare, a former US ambassador to Turkey.

According to Micklewright, the goal of the exhibition is to complicate Güler’s belief in a dichotomy between art and observation. The curators encourage audiences to approach the exhibition from a perspective of ‘visual literacy’, to ‘look at the images carefully and think about the photographer’s choices’. Throughout the exhibition, Micklewright and the students aim to explore the role of photographs in an art museum context; that is, to think about and consider how, by displaying photographs in art museums instead of in newspapers or history museums, the context of an art museum can blur the art/observation distinction.

Güler’s eye for light, and for capturing the juxtapositions between the historical and the modern enable him to explore issues of identity and memory in a country where the past is constantly being reinterpreted.

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In Search of Lost Time