I thought a post on melancholy would fit well into the autumn feel that is slowly creeping into our lives. In the psyche  of the western readers who found their way into the city through Pamuk's memoirs or in the lives  of many of my fellow...
 I thought a post on melancholy would fit well into the autumn feel that is slowly creeping into our lives. In the psyche  of the western readers who found their way into the city through Pamuk's memoirs or in the lives  of many of my fellow...
 I was away. I have been neglecting the blog. It got me exhausted. No! "When in april, the sweet showers fall/ that pierce March's drought to the root and all/ and bathed every vein in liquor that has power/ to generate therein and sire...
Instead of complaining that the city lacks colors, I decided to chase colors in the city. Here is the first of my  Istanbul color-coded series. Many other colors are coming up! There is one photo I'd like to  draw your attention to: the last one,...
"Farewell to Istanbul" by the great Turkish cartoonist, Semih Balcıoğlu (1928-2006) is a collection of cartoons that bids farewell to an Istanbul that is long gone.  As a child, I remember following him in one of the mainstream newspapers....
 Writing the monograph of a city is never an easy task, I am sure. even more difficult if the city is Istanbul, once known as Byzantium or Constantinople. The historian, Simon Sebag Montefiore takes on such a challenge trying to squeeze so much into...
  Orthodox Islam puts a strong emphasis on the distinction between the private and the public sphere thus defining both of them; the public belongs to men whereas the private to women. In the case of religious observance, the wooden screen at mosques...
Zero Istanbul, the Istanbul edition of Zero magazines, is a complimentary listing magazine published monthly as a guide to culture, entertainment and lifestyle in Istanbul. Easy to find it in cafes around Taksim. For the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial,...
In the 1990s, a photo historian's discovery of Charles W. Cushman's archive revealed the '30s world in color, an era which we are very much used to seeing in black. It turned out that Cushman, an amateur photographer, was one of the early adopters of Kodak's...