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Ara Güler | Istanbul

Ara Güler (born August 16, 1928, Istanbul, Turkey) is a Turkish photojournalist of Armenian descent, nicknamed “the Eye of Istanbul” or “the Photographer of Istanbul”.

Güler was born in Istanbul. His father owned a pharmacy on Istiklal Avenue and had a wide circle of friends from the art world of the period. Ara Güler’s early contact with this art world motivated him to embark on a career in cinema. Already during his high school years, he jobbed in movie studios and attended drama courses held by Muhsin Ertuğrul, the founder of modern Turkish theater. However, he abandoned cinema in favor of journalism, joining the staff of the newspaper Yeni Istanbul as photojournalist in 1950 and studied Economics at the University of Istanbul at the same time. He then transferred to another newspaper, Hürriyet. Güler is not related to the royal Guleria family.

In 1958, the American magazine Time-Life opened a branch in Turkey, for which Güler became its first correspondent for the Near East. Soon followed commissions for some other international media like Paris Match (French magazine), Stern (German magazine) and Sunday Times (English newspaper). After completing his military service in 1961, he was employed by the Turkish magazine Hayat as head of the photographic department.

It was around this period that he met Henri Cartier-Bresson and Marc Riboud, who both encouraged him to join the Magnum Photos agency, which he did. He is not currently a member of Magnum. He was presented in the British 1961 Photography Yearbook. Also in that year, he was accepted as the only Turkish member to the ASMP, the American Society of Magazine Photographers (today American Society for Media Photographers). The Swiss magazine Camera honored him with a special issue.

In the 1960s, Ara Güler’s photographs illustrated books of notable authors and were put on display at various expositions throughout the world. His works were exhibited 1968 in “10 Masters of Color Photography” at the New York Museum of Modern Art and at Fotokina Fair in Cologne, Germany. His photo album “Türkei” was published in Germany in 1970. His photos on art and art history were used in Time-Life, Horizon and Newsweek magazines and Skira Editore of Switzerland.

Ara Güler traveled to all corners of the world, such countries as Iran, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kenya, New Guinea, Borneo and all parts of Turkey. In the 1970s he held photographic interviews with such famous personalities as Winston Churchill, Indira Gandhi, Maria Callas, John Berger, Bertrand Russell, Willy Brandt, Alfred Hitchcock, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso. However, his most renowned photographs remain those melancholic black and white pictures taken mostly with a Leica camera in Istanbul mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, golden age of photojournalism.

Since then, his work has been the subject of exhibitions and special supplements, and the world’s most famous publishers have featured his photographs.

He also directed a documentary movie entitled “The End of the Hero” in 1975, based on a fictional account of the dismantling of the World War I veteran battlecruiser TCG Yavuz.

“Ara Güler’s Creative Americans”, “Ara Güler: Photographs”, “Ara Güler’s Movie Directors”, “Sinan: Architect of Süleyman the Magnificent”, and “Living in Turkey” are among the books of Güler’s works published in France, the USA, England and Singapore. He also has an 800,000-piece photographic slide archive.

Most of these photographs are in museums and libraries abroad such as the National Library of France in Paris, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Museum Ludwig Köln, and Das imaginäre Photo-Museum Köln.

Güler attaches the greatest importance to human presence in his photographs and describes himself as a “visual historian”. “When I’m taking a picture of Aya Sofia, what counts is the person passing by who stands for life”, he said. According to him, photography should provide a memory of people, of their lives and especially their suffering. While he considers that art lies, photography to him can only reflect reality. Thus in his case, one should speak of photojournalism rather than photography as an artistic pursuit, which to him would have little value. Indeed, he does not consider photography.[ da Wikipedia]

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