Known as the “Eye of Istanbul”, Ara Güler captured the everyday life and changes of this vibrant city in expressive images that are reminiscent of the aesthetics of early films in their composition and play between light and shadow. Ara Güler saw himself as a news photographer, a photojournalist who captured historical events and daily life in Istanbul and beyond. But his oeuvre goes beyond this: his personal works show fascinating abstract and experimental works.
(...) Continue readingGüler was born in Istanbul in 1928, five years after the founding of the Turkish Republic, to a family of Armenian pharmacists. During his childhood, he was fascinated by cinema and began working in various film studios while still at school. After leaving school, he enrolled to study acting with the Turkish stage actor and director Muhsin Ertuğrul, as he wanted to become a director. Ara then studied economics at Istanbul University while he was already working as a photojournalist for the newspaper “Yeni İstanbul” (New Istanbul), where he began his journalistic career in 1950; he dropped out of university.
In 1956, he met Henri Cartier-Bresson and Marc Riboud. Bresson recruited him for the Magnum Photos agency, of which he became a member. In 1961, he took over the position of head of the photo editorial department of the magazine “Hayat” (“Life”). In 1958, Time-Life opened an office in Istanbul and Ara Güler became the first Middle East correspondent for TIME Magazine. Assignments for international magazines such as Time Life, Paris Match and Stern followed.
He received several awards for his work: in 1961, the “Photography Annual” named him one of the seven best photographers in the world, and in the same year he was admitted to the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP). In 1962, he was named “Master of the Leica” in Germany, and the MoMA in New York exhibited his work in 1968 as part of the “10 Masters of Color Photography” exhibition. In 1999, he received the Turkish “Photographer of the Century” award. He has published numerous books and opened exhibitions worldwide.
Ara Güler photographed until his death in 2018 at the age of 90. Internationally renowned, he is considered the most important representative of photojournalism and creative photography in Turkey. Güler is the namesake of the Ara Kafé, near İstiklal Caddesi in Istanbul.
“Cities are made of men and their monuments. Between grandeur and poverty, strength and melancholy, these two entities coexist. Our job is to show how. If we are honest, we are hunters of souls. But hunters of a delicate kind, using a little sorcery. We do not want to capture images for ourselves, but to share with everyone’s eyes, to keep for everyone.” Ara Güler
Ara Güler - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
