Author: Hambardsumian Paul

“What is this thing called time? Where does it go? What does it do? Is it a thing that we cannot touch? And then one day you look in the mirror – how old – and you say, “Where did the time go?” 

Ara Güler: Eye of Istanbul, an excellent documentary about the legendary Turkish photographer, reminds me of reflective and melancholic words that the Queen of Soul music, the one and only Nina Simone casually utters right before she sings her magnificent piece, “where does the time go”?

We know what happened to the people in Ara Güler’s black and white pictures: Poor workers, porters, fishermen, street sellers with smiling faces, taking deep drags from their cigarette, kids with snivel coming down from their noses playing in now long gone open fields and women carrying water with copper kettles on their shoulders from fountains to their home; they “got on white horses” as in the words of a poet and “went far away”. Ottoman style, traditional wooden houses have been burned to make space for big, ugly shopping malls; cute little streets with cobblestone pavements have been poured with concrete and asphalt, God knows how many times over. But the question remains: Where does the time go?    

To better illustrate the power of photography, one could go to Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, intellectuals who wrote volumes on the very topic and borrow long sentences with big, heavy words in them – but why bother? From simple photos in family albums to polaroids, from passport-style pictures in our licences to masterpieces of Bresson, Kertezy, Koudelka and Güler, the power of photography lay in its ability to stop and capture a moment in time. What makes “an image more powerful than thousands of words ” is the nostalgia for the times long gone, and melancholy expressed in these words of another poet: “I cry every time I remember how we used to laugh”. 

Ara Güler’s black and white photos are the memory of Turkey, a nation famous for its shortness of memory or complete lack of it. It is our past looking at us from a distance, even if it was only a short time ago. And because of his place and legacy as a preserver of things in history, Ara Güler donated his archives to Turkey, instead of selling it for millions of dollars like Slim Aarons, the legendary photographer who captured the rich and famous of American Aristocracy for Town and Country magazine. 

Turkey, in return, loved his loyal son. He was always holding court in a chic, modern cafe in Beyoğlu carrying his name, ARA, adorned with his iconic pictures. He ate there, sipped his Turkish coffee, signed his books and posed for selfies. 

But I am not so sure if Turkey showed the same love and loyalty to the Armenian minority Ara Guler is a part of. 

On 6 and 7 of September 1955, thousands of Turks, provoked and manipulated by dark forces inside the government, looted the shops belonging to the Greek and Armenian minorities, raped the women, beat the men and children. These words belong to one of the legendary soccer player, Lefter Küçükandonyadis, a Fenerbahçe player of Greek origin:

“They carried me on their shoulders when I scored two weeks ago. But on 6 and 7 of September, I faced an angry mob with stones and sticks. What hurt me most is seeing the kids I give money on the street attacking my house. They tried to kill my little girls. Later they asked me a lot who the attackers were. I did not tell them then. I won’t tell a thing now.”

As an up and coming photojournalist, Ara Güler took pictures of what happened on 6 and 7 of September, probably one of the most horrific, barbaric episodes of Turkey. In the documentary, He describes these two days as both “drama and comedy” and rightfully so because the very person who put a bandage on the looter’s injured hands happens to be Ara Güler’s Armenian, pharmacist father.  

In light of all this, it could come across as surprising when Ara Güler says, “I never felt discriminated against as an Armenian”, but it should not. In that geography where an “either love it or leave” mentality dominates, those who talked about more justice, asked for more rights, or said words that offended the wrong people paid a heavy price. But to say Ara Güler was too intimidated to criticize and scared to talk about the injustices his nation endured would be an insult to his memory. 

Besides being a great artist and one of the most important photographers of the last century, he was also a great humanist who saw himself as part of the long line of Anatolia’s vast heritage of diverse civilizations with many ethnicities and religions coexisting peacefully. Sure, he photographed Picasso, Dali, Hitchcock, Sophia Loren and many other iconic figures of the last century and he travelled the world, saw a couple of wars, some plagues, and the best and the worst this life could offer. Still, he managed to give humanity two monumental books of hard work and rigorous research: A photographic chronicling of the genius of Mimar Sinan, a great architect of the classical Ottoman Era, and the discovery of Aphrodisias, ancient Hellenic ruins in Geyre Village in Western Turkey.    

Istanbul, the city that Ara Güler “saved with his pictures from those who don’t care about anything except money”, inspired Ron Colbroth, a photographer friend, to take his first pictures. 

In 1967 and 68, Ron ventured out of the Navy base where he was stationed in Karamursel, Turkey and started spending his time discovering Istanbul, taking black and white pictures just like Ara Güler who he later discovered and those pictures he took with an instinct and intuition long before he became a professional photographer, paved the road to a successful career. 

Looking at Ron’s beautiful black and white pictures, we ask the same question?

Where does the time go?  

Ron Colbroth, 1967-68, Istanbul Ron Colbroth, 1967-68, Istanbul Ron Colbroth, 1967-68, Istanbul