The Daily Telegraph (London)
November 2, 2018 Friday
Ara Güler: Photographer whose pictures of Istanbul evoked the sadness of the loss of the Ottoman Empire
1 November 2018 • 6:13pm
ARA GÜLER, who has died aged 90, was a photojournalist who became known as the "eye of Istanbul" for his atmospheric black and white photographs of the city, taken over more than 60 years, which seemed to evoke what the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk described as "the cloud of gloom and loss that the fall of the Ottoman Empire had spread over Istanbul".
As a member of the Magnum photographic agency, Güler travelled the world, taking colour photographs of scenes in India, Bangladesh, Burma, the Philippines, Kenya, Senegal and many more, and making portraits of such figures as Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Maria Callas, Alfred Hitchcock, Picasso and Tennessee Williams. Yet he was most proud of his work in his native Turkey and especially in Istanbul, where he lived all his life and whose crumbling charms are increasingly being lost to slick commercialisation.
Güler's photographs featured views of abandoned wooden houses, fog-wreathed minarets, ice on the Bosporus – and the people of the city: a grubby child peering from behind decaying tombstones inscribed with ornate Arabic script; labourers unloading hulking freighters; fishermen in coffee shops mending their nets, couples walking down foggy streets; old men gazing out over their drinks; horses pulling carts up snowy hillsides, and Muslim worshippers bowing in prayer. Orhan Pamuk used some to illustrate his nostalgic memoir Istanbul: Memories of a City, helping him to evoke his "huzun" – sense of desolation – at what had happened to his beloved city since his childhood.
The Turkish writer Yasar Kemal, who compared Güler's talents to those of Cezanne, Turner and Gauguin, observed that he delved deeply "into both nature and man … For years perhaps he carries within him a certain face, a certain smile, a certain _expression_ of pain or sadness. And then, when the time is ripe, he presses the button.'' Güler acknowledged having learned his technique through studying great painters. But he dismissed the idea that he was an artist, insisting that he was a mere "press photographer": "Photography looks like art, but art has to have some kind of depth. Painting is art. Music is art … Photography is interpretation. I hate the idea of becoming an artist. My job is to travel and record what I see.'' He was born Ara Derderyan to Armenian parents on August 16 1928 in Beyoglu, Istanbul. In 1935 a law compelled them to take a Turkish surname. His father owned a pharmacy in the Galatasaray neighbourhood and sold many of the powders and chemicals used by Turkish filmmakers to develop their film, inspiring Ara to pursue a career in cinema.
While at the Getronagan Armenian High School, he did odd jobs in film studios and attended drama courses. One day, however, there was a huge fire in the studio where he was working and he had to climb on to the roof to be rescued. The building eventually collapsed. "My father decided that enough was enough, and he got me a job in a newspaper. There, I learned that writing an article takes a long time. I liked photography better. You got faster results."
He joined the newspaper Yeni Istanbul in 1950 and studied Economics at the University of Istanbul at the same time. He moved to another paper, Hürriyet, before joining the Turkish magazine Hayat as head of the photographic department. In 1958 he was hired by the American magazine group Time Life, which had opened an office in Istanbul. Henri Cartier-Bresson and Marc Riboud recruited him for the Magnum agency; later on he left to work freelance.
In 1961 the British magazine, Photography Annual, named him one of the world's seven greatest photographers, and he became the only Turkish member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers. The same year the Swiss magazine Camera devoted an issue to him.
Though of Armenian ancestry, Güler claimed that he considered himself "just a Turkish person like any Ahmet or Mehmet". Yet Orhan Pamuk recently recalled in the New York Times how Guler walked into his office in 2005 after he (Pamuk) had received death threats from Turkish nationalists. Pamuk had given an interview complaining that it was still impossible to talk in Turkey about the terrible things that were done to the Ottoman Armenians 90 years before. Guler "was out of breath and cursing everything and everyone, in his characteristic manner. Then he embraced me with his huge frame and started to cry. Those who knew Ara … will understand my amazement at seeing him cry like that. He kept on swearing and telling me, 'They can't touch you, those people!' "After crying for a very long time, Ara finally calmed down, and then, as if this had been the whole purpose of his visit to my office, he drank a glass of water and left." In their previous conversations, Pamuk had never felt able to touch upon the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, but now, "I no longer felt the urge to ask him about his grandfathers and grandmothers. The great photographer had already told me everything through his tears."
Güler felt that the young of Istanbul no longer knew or appreciated the history of their city: "What they know is the junk of Istanbul. The poetic, romantic, aesthetic aspect of the city is lost. I understand the smell of Istanbul … But the great culture I knew is gone.'' Güler's first marriage, to Perihan Sariöz, was dissolved. His second wife, Suna Taskiran, died in 2010.
Ara Güler, born August 16 1928, died October 17 2018
