WHEN (Original title: NEZAMAN) Kerim Suner Authors Ahmet Ersoy Kerim Suner Translation Merve Pehlivan Revision and Proofreading Hande Varsat Book Design Yeşim Demir Pröhl Printing and Binding Ofset Yapımevi Çağlayan Mah. Şair Sokak No: 4 Kâğıthane, İstanbul Sertifika no: 45354 ISBN: 978-625-93345-2-3 © 2026, Lebriz Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık Edin & Suner Plaza 3A Meydan Sokak No: 14 Akatlar 34335 Istanbul Turkey info@lebriz.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the publisher and the copyright owners. nezaman.istanbul
For Alp and Mutlu
With cordial respect to James Robertson Guillaume Berggren Pascal Sébah Polycarpe Joaillier Kevork, Viçen, Hovsep Abdullah Basile Kargopoulo Felice Beato Bogos Tarkulyan Hilda Ullin Kirkor, Yervant, Artin Gülmez and other 19th-century Istanbul photographers who inspired this project
THE LIQUID TIME OF PHOTOGRAPHY AHMET ERSOY infrastructure — its speed, accessibility, accumulation, and ephemerality in the production and circulation of data — as a rupture or breakthrough in the field of photography, as in all image technologies. We have moved from a period in which photographs were entrusted to the future as singular objects of memory, to one in which they are produced and released into the media ecosphere like fleeting utterances. What often escapes notice, however, is that a comparable rupture took place in the history of photography in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. The introduction in the 1880s of the silver-gelatin dry plate process, which relied on ready-made, factoryproduced plates, eliminated the burdens of preparing photographic plates immediately before exposure, exposing them while still wet, and developing them without delay. This innovation significantly accelerated and simplified the photographic process. The Kodak camera, introduced by George Eastman in 1888 with the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest,” made it possible for anyone to produce photographs without requiring particular skill or knowledge. Emerging within the framework of modern consumer culture, photographic technology reached the height of its commercial potential with the “Kodak box” and the roll film contained within it. From this point on, photography became a “black-boxed” industrial technology for its mass users, something that could be used easily and routinely without any understanding of the device’s internal workings.3 This first rupture, which enabled photographic technology to reach wider audiences and become democratized, also marked the end of the early period often described as photography’s “liquid phase,” during which techniques such as the daguerreotype, calotype, and wet collodion were in use.4 3 For further information on blackboxing as a concept see Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1999). 4 It should be emphasized, of course, that we cannot speak of an absolute or sudden rupture here. Although the Kodak box ushered in a new era in amateur photography, in regions such as the Ottoman Empire the wet collodion process continued to be used commercially well into the early twentieth century. Perhaps photography has been digital from the very beginning. Photography historian Geoffrey Batchen, who has written extensively on the medium’s polyphonic, multicentered invention process, argues that digitality is embedded in the very essence and nature of photographic technology. Drawing attention, for instance, to the photograms that the early pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) called “photogenic drawings” (camera-less photographs made by placing objects such as plants or lace directly onto a light-sensitive surface; Figure 1), Batchen emphasizes that the photographic act is fundamentally structured around a binary pattern of light and dark, that is, the presence and absence of light (open/closed; 0/1).1 Media theorist Joanna Zylinska takes this argument a step further, suggesting that the digital nature inherent in photography cannot be reduced to this simple binary logic. In her view, photography, as a technology of recording and transmission oriented toward the mass production, distribution, and consumption of images, has always contained within its structure the defining features of digitality, including immediacy, rapid circulation, and ephemerality.2 Approaches that focus on the production and circulation dynamics of early photography argue that the digital revolution has not brought about as radical a transformation in our modes of perception or in our relationship to photography as is often assumed. My intention here is not to enter into a debate over whether photography is inherently a digital medium. Yet, setting aside certain fundamental and defining aspects of the medium, it is beyond doubt that at specific moments in the history of photography, technological change has produced clear ruptures. We have become quite accustomed to describing the quantitative and qualitative shifts brought about by the digital 1 Geoffrey Batchen, “Electricity Made Visible,” ed. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan (ed.) New Media, Old Media (New York and London, 2006): 27–44. Batchen also notes that during this period Fox Talbot exchanged ideas with the mathematician Charles Babbage, one of the pioneers of the concept of the programmable computer. For further discussion of the photogram technique used by Talbot, see Burcu Böcekler, “Kamerasız Fotoğrafın Kısa Tarihçesi ve Kamerasız Fotoğraf Teknikleriyle Üretim Yapan Çağdaş Fotoğrafçılar,” Art-E: Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi Sanat Dergisi, vol. 13, no. 26 (December 2020): 576–594. 2 Joanna Zylinska, “On Bad Archives, Unruly Snappers and Liquid Photographs,” Photographies 3:2 (2010): 139–153. Figure 1 William Henry Fox Talbot Lace The Pencil of Nature, 1844, Plate XX
11 10 components of the apparatus, light, dust, humidity, and so on. In this sense, the liquid phase of photography anticipated an experience of image-making open to experimentation, variability, uncertainty, and chance. In its early period, before being co-opted by corporate capitalism, photographic practice offered its users (or perhaps those with access to its use) an experimental and open field of participation, one that might even be described as a kind of “photographic commons.” In this respect, early photography bears a certain resemblance to the early stages of the internet, before it was fully overtaken by digital capitalism, when it still prioritized participatory and collaborative forms of creativity. Within this space governed by trial and error, play and experimentation, users could potentially assume the roles of inventors and innovators. A figure such as Louis Sabuncu, the Ottoman Court Translator of the Inner Chamber and a figure who might be described as a nineteenth-century Ottoman polymath, for instance, was able to obtain patents in England and France for photographic technologies.8 The early, fluid phase of photography can be said to possess a kind of “liquid intelligence,” shaped by the variability and uncertainty it contains. Much like today’s artificial intelligence, which can generate data in ways that are sometimes unintelligible or unpredictable even to its designers, the liquid intelligence of early photography also carried a certain degree of autonomy and independence. In wet processes, chemical reactions, optical distortions, or deviations introduced by any of the shifting variables could determine the final image and its texture, potentially disrupting it entirely or, perhaps — as in the hallucinations of artificial intelligence — redirecting the photographer toward unexpected creative alternatives. In this regard, one might recall Kerim Suner’s series of failed wet collodion photographs compiled under the title Failure Is an Option (Figure 2).9 Kerim Suner’s photographs, also produced through wet processes and largely in the ambrotype format and gathered under the title “When”, establish a nuanced, inventive, and at times ambivalent relationship with Istanbul’s photographic memory. At first glance, their tonal range, textures, and formats evoke the celebrated studio traditions of the nineteenth century, recalling views of Istanbul documented in the works of Sébah & Joaillier or the Abdullah Frères. With their exposure-induced density, objects and landscapes appear almost sealed onto the surface of the plate. They are set off by empty, indifferent skies that further deepen and bring them into relief, by dense and opaque fragments of sea resembling sheets of glass, and by striking contrasts of black, white, and grey. In this sense, the images unmistakably carry a nineteenth-century sensibility. One might expect these photographs, which bear the defining traces of older technologies and thus produce a sense of temporal distance, to establish a nostalgic bond with the 8 For Louis Sabuncu, see Kasım Hızlı, Yıldız Sarayı’nda Muhalif Bir Gazeteci: Mâbeyn Mütercimi Louis Sabuncu, 1891–1908 (Ankara, 2020). For Sabuncu’s (Louis Saboungi in Arabic transliteration) photographic patents, see Stephen Sheehi, The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910 (Princeton, 2016): 44–47. 9 For the series Failure Is an Option, see https:/ kerimsuner.com/tr/series/failure-is-an-option/ Kerim Suner is among the contemporary photographers who favor working with the fluid, process-based techniques characteristic of the mid-nineteenth century; he produces most of his photographs using wet collodion and related processes. As Alaz Okudan notes in his insightful article, which also covers Suner’s work, the turn by contemporary photographers toward such labor-intensive early technologies stems largely from a reaction against the standardizing, homogenizing, and algorithm-driven constraints of digital image production.5 Focusing on the distinct limitations and creative possibilities afforded by different photographic techniques, these artists choose to move away from the sterile and alienating nature of digital processes and instead engage with early methods that enable a tactile, embodied relationship with the material. These craft-oriented alternative practices also prompt us to reconsider the assumptions of conventional art history and art criticism, which tend to treat the photographic image as a finished product and evaluate it primarily in terms of visual content and aesthetic criteria. Photographers like Kerim Suner, who work with pre-digital and even pre-Kodak techniques, invite us to understand the visual output — whether printed on paper or displayed on screen — as part of a broader, temporally extended process of imagemaking, one that is deeply bound up with materiality. In doing so, they propose that this material and tactile process of production should be regarded as an essential and defining component of the photographic experience. The wet collodion process favored by Kerim Suner, in use since 1851, is a photographic technique that remained popular worldwide for a long time thanks to the high sharpness and fine detail it affords. It is often described as the most fluid of the popular photographic processes. The method requires a sensitized plate to be exposed while still wet and then developed within ten to fifteen minutes.6 In managing the process, not only the photographer’s skill and judgment but also the variability introduced by light, timing, and volatile chemicals play a crucial role. For instance, a photographer attempting a multi-plate panorama outdoors would need to prepare each plate individually, rush each one to the mobile darkroom set up on site and develop it before it dried, and adjust for shifting light and atmospheric conditions while exposing successive plates. At the same time, the photographer would have to contend with curious onlookers and, at times, overly inquisitive officials (needless to say, wet collodion photography and related printing processes typically required intensive teamwork).7 Wet collodion photography, then, was composed of a hybrid and at times unstable assemblage of human and nonhuman agents — chemicals, the optical and mechanical 5 Alaz Okudan, “Camera Archaeologia: A Media Archaeological Investigation into the Contemporary Use of NineteenthCentury Photographic Processes,” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 38 (2025) <https:/ doi.org/10.16995/ntn.17135> 6 Wet collodion photography, and early photography more broadly, was essentially a product of the “chemical revolution” of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which also played a significant role in the environmental devastation we face today. 7 When I was present at Kerim Suner’s Eyüp panorama (pp. 86–87) shoot, taken from Pierre Loti Hill, I had the chance to directly observe the pressure, uncertainty, and joy of discovery generated by all the variables involved in the process. Figure 2 Selected plates from the Failure Is an Option series 2015 Failure #04 Failure #28 Failure #44 Success? Failure #06 Failure #11
13 12 viewer. Yet Suner’s choice of locations, his framing decisions, and the conspicuous presence of modern elements that visibly disrupt any stable sense of historicity in many images — contemporary urban specters seeping in from the edges of the frame, or technological infrastructures overtly dominating the composition — imply that When resists such easy readings. The relationship to historicity here is too layered and complex to be contained within familiar nostalgic patterns. Suner’s photographs, while engaging openly with nineteenth-century urban views produced for commercial purposes as well as with photographic tradition, technology, and archival memory, nonetheless demand a more critical and questioning gaze from the viewer through their temporal ambiguities, contradictions, and dissonances. Of course, such a demand presupposes that the works achieve a level of technical mastery capable of standing in dialogue with their nineteenth-century counterparts. At this point, it is important to acknowledge the craftsmanship and labor of Kerim Suner and the 1851.studio team (in particular Hande Varsat and Duygu Duymazlar), and to recognize their sensitivity to the medium and their dedication to its material processes. The photographs in the When series are the joint product of Kerim Suner, the initiator of this artistic endeavor, and the liquid intelligence of the ambrotype process, along with a range of variable techno-material conditions that actively shape the process. It is possible to trace on the surface of these works the specific constraints of photography, a medium that has long claimed to offer a direct and faithful representation of reality, while never fully succeeding in doing so. These traces are especially evident in the conditions particular to the wet ambrotype process: the shimmering, iridescent fluidity of the ambrotype, which recalls the Ottoman observers’ description of the daguerreotype as a “flirtatious mirror”,10 the inversion of the image when captured on black glass,11 the irregularity of the image’s edges; the ragged contours formed by the collodion layer coating the glass; the deep darkness beyond the limits of the lens; the neutral whiteness of unretouched skies; and, finally, a pervasive sense of desolation, emptiness, and timelessness produced by a technology insensitive to speed and movement. These are among the defining marks of the process. Some of these constraints directly determine the texture and content of the final image; some are related to the threshold of detectability of the apparatus itself, while others stem from the chemical nature of the process, with its inherent surprises, mode of temporal organization, rhythm, and patterns.12 10 The description “flirtatious mirror” (cilvegîr mir’at) was used in 1839 in the Ottoman official gazette Takvim-i Vekayi to describe the daguerreotype at the time of its invention. See Takvim-i Vekayi (19 Sha‘ban 1266 [28 October 1839]). For a modern Turkish transcription of the text, see Alberto Modiano, Basında Fotoğraf Yazıları Kılavuzu (Istanbul, 1991), 13–15. 11 Ambrotype images made on black glass appear inverted; however, some of Suner’s photographs in this series are made on clear glass whose emulsion side is coated with asphaltum. In these cases, because the viewer sees the image from the back side, the image appears in its correct orientation. The result is that, due to differing finishing techniques, some photographs appear mirrored while others do not. 12 For the temporal dynamics of technical media and the concept of “machinic time,” see Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive (Minneapolis, 2013). In the When series, the liquid production technique of photography generates a pronounced sense of historicity, rendering everyday cityscapes that are in some cases highly familiar suddenly dubious and unknown. Recorded landscapes and monuments are displaced from contemporary perception through history’s estranging effect. Streets emptied of crowds, city walls aligned with the romantic tradition of ruins, a still Bosphorus devoid of maritime traffic (and perhaps a single seagull captured only because it happened to fly against the wind), and many other familiar corners of the city are portrayed through photography’s immobilizing and desolating force, and turned into objects of inquiry with uncertain temporal attributes (Figure 3, see p. 31). In some images, this estrangement even pushes the landscape toward the edges of the uncanny and the unsettling. For example, the panoramic view from Karlıtepe, with its encompassing perspective, the deep, near-black vegetation in the right-hand corner, and the silvery surface of the Bosphorus extending inward, draws on visual elements we readily associate with historical panoramic photography (Figure 4, see pp. 96–98). Yet this Bosphorus view, conventionally expected to be pastoral, acquires a darker and more sinister character through the blurring effect of air pollution and the overwhelming presence of modern urban development crowding the horizon. In fact, “When” is a vital inquiry which encapsulates the fundamental temporal tension inherent to photography itself, one that touches its very essence. Even if we have grown accustomed to it, we know well that the “magic” of photography lies in its ability to freeze and suspend time. Beyond this, however, as Roland Barthes famously observed, one of photography’s defining features is the temporal overlap it produces: each photograph has the ability to fuse a vanished instant, when light reflected off an object and adhered to a chemical surface, with the present moment of viewing, creating a layered, laminated temporal structure.13 In Suner’s work, this layering becomes even more complex, as it incorporates both the historicity of monuments that have accumulated and preserved material traces of time, and the historicity of nineteenthcentury photographic technology itself, discernible in its dominant visual codes. Taken as a whole, the When series interweaves the sense of atemporality (or temporal indeterminacy) mentioned above, with a rich layering of temporal references, drawing the viewer into a reflective and ambivalent experience of time. In this experience, the deep Paleolithic time of the Yarımburgaz Cave merges with the near time of Levent skyscrapers, the Bosphorus Bridge, traffic lights, and bodies of scrap minibuses, which all merge with the fluid time of wet collodion. If we consider the word “When” as a question, any definitive answer would disrupt the very enchantment of the workings of photography. Perhaps one can only say this much as an answer: when the fluid time of photography meets its liquid intelligence. 13 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Fotoğraf Üzerine Düşünceler (trans. Reha Akçakaya) (Istanbul, 2014). Figure 3 Fissured Tower #14 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Figure 4 Panorama from Karlıtepe #01 2022 15 x 35 cm each Ambrotype
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109 108 One branch of my family has been based in Istanbul for generations. Apart from the first four years of my life, when I lived in Ankara because of my father’s military service and work, I have spent my entire life in Istanbul. Yet as the project progressed, I realized that I did not truly know the city at all. I must admit, with embarrassment, that Çemberlitaş meant little more to me than a place we visited a few times in my childhood to eat pickles. Prompted by this sense of embarrassment, I began an intensive study of Istanbul’s history and started assembling a broad collection of nineteenthcentury photographs of the city. At the same time, I attempted to capture present-day views of iconic landmarks such as Hagia Sophia, Anatolian Fortress, Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, and the Ortaköy Mosque from the same vantage points, comparing them with images taken 150 years ago. As I became more aware of what had vanished, what had changed, and what had endured in defiance of time, I felt my connection to the city deepen. It was as though Istanbul were struggling against an invisible force intent on erasing its past. Having withstood dozens of earthquakes, fires, and invasions over the centuries, this magnificent city now seemed to be fighting for survival against the reckless development, overcrowding, and disorder of recent years. It felt as though the historic monuments still standing from the serene, harmonious, and remarkably beautiful city seen in nineteenth-century photographs were posing one last time before they vanished. The city walls in particular, which had protected Istanbul for centuries, now appeared either to be succumbing to nature or losing their character amid reconstruction. Over the course of nearly five years, we raced against time. We set up a mobile darkroom at seventy-two different locations and inscribed Istanbul onto immortal glass plates. From 751 glass negatives and ambrotypes, we created more than 1,000 photographs using a range of historical techniques. For the sake of visual coherence, this book presents a selection composed exclusively of ambrotypes. Today, digital technologies have reached astonishing levels, with artificial intelligence generating images that seem to eliminate the need to take photographs at all. In this context, striving to produce photographs using labor-intensive, hazardous, slow, On April 14, 2021, we went to Ulus Park to make the first exposure of an as-yet-unnamed venture. I had no real sense of the project’s scope or conceptual framework. I had simply decided to follow my curiosities: what Istanbul — where I have spent nearly my entire life — would look like when photographed using the wet collodion process I had been working with for years; and how, and under what conditions, nineteenth-century photographers such as James Robertson, Pascal Sébah, Polycarpe Joaillier, and Guillaume Berggren produced the Istanbul photographs I have long admired (Figure 1).1 Although I began the project with the confidence that comes from years of practicing both wet collodion and albumen printing, the first few sessions ended in disappointment. Up to that point, I had always worked in the studio. Once I stepped outside, the balance of my comfort zone shifted. The chemicals behaved differently, and my exposure calculations no longer held. A range of variables such as temperature, wind, rain, the position of the sun had to be taken into account. Even when the negatives appeared promising at the moment of exposure, the prints we made from them were discouraging. Over time, by gleaning clues from historical sources and experimenting with different methods, we were able to produce usable negatives and ambrotypes.2 In this way, a long journey into the history of both Istanbul and photography gradually began. 1 The wet collodion process, developed in 1851 by the English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer (1814–57), was the most widely used and practical photographic technique of the nineteenth century. Photographers working with this method coated glass plates with a self-prepared chemical mixture to create light-sensitive surfaces, capturing the image as a negative directly on the plate. They would then produce prints in their studios by contact-printing these glass negatives onto paper coated with egg white (albumen), allowing the photographs to be reproduced. A significant proportion of the nineteenth-century photographs that have survived to the present day were produced in this way. 2 Frederick Scott Archer developed the wet collodion process as a means of reproducing photographs by taking negative images on glass and contact-printing them on paper. In later years, he also discovered that by coating one side of the negative with a black material, or by using black glass instead of clear glass, it was possible to produce a unique positive image known as a collodion positive. The practice of creating positive images on glass, one that Archer did not patent, was patented in the United States in 1854 by James Anson Cutting. He named the process the “ambrotype,” deriving the term from the Greek word ambrotos, meaning “immortal,” and also changed his middle name from Anson to Ambrose. WHEN KERİM SUNER Figure 1 Guillaume Berggren Place de Séraskiérat (Beyazıt Square) 21 x 27.5 cm Albumen print Lebriz Collection
unpredictable, and ostensibly obsolete techniques may appear pointless. The roots of this endeavor lie in my childhood. Thanks to my father’s work, I was introduced to computers in the early 1970s, when I was only five or six years old. The first computer game I played was a simple golf game in which the letters “u” (the hole) and “o” (the ball) appeared on a printer and had to be brought together. By the time I was in high school, I was fluent in four programming languages and was producing graphic animations with what was then very rudimentary technology. In the late 1980s, I prepared the user manual for one of the first inkjet printers to arrive in Turkey. From floppy-disk-recording cameras onward, I worked extensively with digital cameras and used major photoprocessing software since their earliest versions. Although digital photography initially excited me, over time I began to feel that the human contribution, both in process and in outcome, was gradually diminishing. As technology advanced, results became more perfect, yet somehow also more ordinary.3 This realization led me back to analog photography. I began with the camera I had used in high school, which still works, and gradually moved further back to the techniques used in the earliest years of photography. It is difficult to describe the satisfaction I derive from being present, through my own manual labor, at every stage of a process that begins with preparing chemicals from scratch to sensitize an ordinary glass plate and ends with an image formed from noble metals such as silver, gold, and platinum. Reviving pieces photographic equipment that have become inert, reduced to shelf objects fading to oblivion, and using them to create new images gives me an extraordinary sense of pleasure, together with a feeling of gratitude toward their makers and a sense of reverence for their previous owners. Prompted by habits from my former profession, I occasionally test the level that artificial intelligence systems have reached in image generation. The other day, I entered a few prompts into one of them and asked it to generate a variation of the Hagia Sophia ambrotype on page 80. The resulting image was both highly convincing and, at the same time, unsettling (Figure 2). The two men in my photograph, who appear as if they had come straight from the nineteenth century, were in fact German chimney sweeps (Schornsteinfeger) who happened to be there entirely by chance during the shoot. After we met them and talked for half an hour, they posed for us. I learned that, as part of their cultural tradition, they travel to various European cities wearing their traditional outfits. In many of our shoots, we had similar unique encounters that left us with lasting memories. Images very similar to the photographs we produced over five years could, in theory, be generated within a few hours at a computer using artificial intelligence. Had I chosen that path, however, I would not have experienced any of the difficulties, frustrations, 3 Today, if we want to make prints from digital photographs, we have very few options beyond output from an inkjet printer. Although terms such as “archival pigment print,” “giclée,” and “piezography” may sound sophisticated, they all are ultimately inkjet prints. In contrast, the nineteenth century offered more than fifty photographic printing processes, each with its own distinct aesthetic. 111 110 disappointments, moments of excitement, joy, exhilaration, or friendships that accompanied the process. I would not have met the German chimney sweeps, nor undertaken a remarkable journey of discovery into the histories of photography and of Istanbul filled with true memories. Instead, I would have simply sat at a computer, eating pizza and drinking coke; and viewers, in turn, would not have had the chance to experience these handcrafted photographs as physical objects; they would have merely glanced at pixels flickering on a screen for a few seconds. Until quite recently, we believed that machines would have little to no role in creative fields. Today, however, we consume “creative” content generated by artificial intelligence in the visual arts, literature, and music almost without even noticing. Meanwhile, again without even noticing it, we are being pushed across all domains into the position of consumers rather than producers, rapidly approaching the kind of world order depicted in dystopian narratives. Through my own work, I try to raise awareness of the value of lived experience through the creative process. When I look at the photographs we produced over five years as a whole, I see a mixture of Istanbul’s struggle for survival and my own resistance against an impending technological dystopia. Perhaps one day, the comet4 that unexpectedly appears in the photograph on pages 106–107 will truly fall upon us, bringing our struggle to an end and taking us back once again to the caves. But when? 4 The wet collodion process requires exceptionally clean glass. However, when working outdoors, a single dust particle can fall onto the glass as the collodion solution is poured and adhere to its surface. When the glass plate enters the silver bath, this particle can produce a meteor-like deformation around itself, known as a “comet.” If we are fortunate, as in our example, such an imperfection can add an unexpected layer of meaning to the photograph. Figure 2 Two men in 19th-century attire in front of Hagia Sophia, 2026 AI-assisted digital image
113 Yarımburgaz Cave #16 2022 21.5 x 16.5 cm Ambrotype Yarımburgaz Cave #21 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Şile Castle #19 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Column of Constantine #10 2022 35 x 28 cm Ambrotype Column of Constantine #02 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Basilica Cistern #02 2022 35 x 28 cm Ambrotype Basilica Cistern #03 2022 16.5 x 21.5 cm Ambrotype Column of Arcadius #02 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Land Walls #02 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Fissured Tower #14 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Yarımburgaz Cave #07 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Yarımburgaz Cave #18 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype
115 114 Gate of Hagia Ioannes #02 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Mağlova Aqueduct #03 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Mağlova Aqueduct #04 2022 16.5 x 21.5 cm Ambrotype Phanar Greek Orthodox High School #03 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Greek Orphanage in Prinkipos #08 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Anatolian Fortress #04 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Land Walls #18 2025 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Bridge of Suleiman the Magnificent #07 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Mimar Sinan Bridge #01 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Kuleli Military High School #08 2021 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Rumeli Fortress #01 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Fissured Tower #05 2021 21.5 x 16.5 cm Ambrotype Roots 2023 35 x 28 cm Ambrotype Sea Walls #09 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Land Walls #10 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Kharisios Gate #02 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Sea Walls #01 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Marble Tower #16 2022 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Walls of Leon #06 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Land Walls #07 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Palace of the Porphyrogenitus #09 2022 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Paradox #05 2022 35 x 28 cm Ambrotype Fissured Tower #08 2021 35 x 28 cm Ambrotype Galata Tower #02 2022 35 x 28 cm Ambrotype
117 116 Panorama from Karlıtepe #01 2022 15 x 35 cm each Ambrotype Golden Horn Metro Bridge #02 2023 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype View from Poyrazköy #09 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Panorama from Saraçhane #01 2022 28 x 35 cm each Ambrotype View from my Father’s Office #02 2024-2025 15 x 35 cm Palladium print from wet collodion negative Hagia Sophia #11 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Tophane Fountain #04 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Hagia Sophia #06 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Süleymaniye Mosque #02 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Panorama from Pierre Loti #01 2022 28 x 35 cm each Ambrotype View from Sevda Hill #06 2021 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype View from Süleymaniye #05 2022 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Beyazıt Square #09 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Ortaköy Mosque #08 2021 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Leander’s Tower #07 2023 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque #02 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype Panorama from Karaköy #01 2022 28 x 35 cm each Ambrotype View from Nakkaştepe #03 2021 15 x 35 cm Ambrotype İstiklal Street #04 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype
119 118 A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S This project was made possible through the dedication of an exceptional team. I would like to express my deepest thanks to: Hande Varsat, my coworker for over a decade, whose contribution to every photograph in this book is equal to my own, and whose critical eye continues to challenge and refine my work; my 1851.studio colleagues Duygu Duymazlar, Sabah Yıldırım, Su Kadıoğlu, Ahmet Çiçek, İzzet Edemin, Arif Sever, Hüseyin Kaya, and Gülsen Öner; Hava Kablan Günay, who has been my coworker for 22 years, for initiating this project; my dear friend Ahmet Ersoy, for his illuminating essay which enhanced the context of this book; Yeşim Demir Pröhl, who gave life to this book with her creative design; Nuh Kuşçulu for providing the means to import the specialized glass plates used in this project; administrations of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Beykoz Municipality, Üsküdar Municipality, German High School of Istanbul, Phanar Greek Orthodox High School, Istanbul İçerik Atölyesi, Büyükada Greek Orphanage Foundation, and Galataport for granting us access to their spaces; Sermet Tolan and the Ofset Yapımevi team for the production of this book; Aydın Berk Bilgin, Özcan Geçer, Erkin Saygı, Nazmi Bağdınlı, Naci Öncel, Dimitri Zotos, Laki Vingas, Halim Kanatçı, Utku Oğuz, Cengiz Özkarabekir, Fabrizio Casaretto, Gülderen Bölük, Aykut Altınelli, Niyazi Karıksız, Barış Duruçalı, Gökçe Sungur, Göksel Gül, Özgür Özgel, Kağan Tunca, and Seyfettin Tokmak for their valuable support; and to France Scully Osterman, Mark Osterman, John Brewer, Quinn Jacobson, and Ian Ruhter for their guidance in my journey of learning historical photographic processes. Self-portrait 2022 28 x 35 cm Ambrotype
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