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RENOWNED ARMENIAN PHOTOGRAPHER IS BESTOWED HONORARY DOCTORATE DEGREE FROM TURKISH UNIVERSITY

 

http://news.am/eng/news/143255.html

March 06, 2013 | 13:44

 

ISTANBUL. - Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University of Istanbul bestowed

an honorary doctorate degree upon world-renowned Istanbul-Armenian

photographer and photojournalist, Ara Guler.

 

Members of the University Senate organized an event in tribute to

Guler, during which he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree,

Istanbul's Agos Armenian bilingual weekly reports.

 

Taking the microphone upon the request of the audience, Guler said

he is happy that there is such interest toward him, and stressed that

he is involved in journalism for sixty years.

 

"Now, I think that photojournalists, documentary film makers craft a

visual part of human history. Doing all this becomes historiography,"

he noted.

 

To note, Ara Guler, who was recognized as the "Photographer of the

Century"-and who is also known as "the Eye of Istanbul"-was born in

the city in 1928, and he began his journalistic career in 1950. He

has received many Turkish and international awards and titles and

has photographed numerous world-renowned personalities.

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  • 4 years later...
PanArmenian, Armenia
Oct 17 2017
Istanbul to rename street in honor of Armenian photographer

The Istanbul municipality has approved a proposal to rename Tosbaga street in the district of Beyoglu in honor of prominent Turkish-Armenian photographer Ara Guler.

Nicknamed "the Eye of Istanbul", Guler lived on the street in question for many years and still retains his studio there, Ermenihaber.am says.

According to reports, the Istanbul city hall never approves renaming streets in the historic city but the proposal to give a new name to the street in honor of the 89-year-old photographer was given green light to this time.

As reported earlier, the first photography museum will open in Turkey and feature works by the renowned Armenian artist.

http://panarmenian.net/m/eng/news/247709

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Asbarez.com
Legendary Turkish-Armenian Photographer Ara Guler Passes Away
http://asbarez.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/gulerfeature.jpg

Ara Guler

World-renowned Turkish-Armenian photographer Ara Güler, nicknamed the “Eye of Istanbul,” passed away late Wednesday at the intensive care unit of the Florence Nightingale Hospital in Istanbul after attempts to revive him failed. He was 90.

For years he had suffered from kidney failure and underwent dialysis three times a week.

Born on August 16, 1926, Güler studied at Getronagan Armenian High School. His father owned a pharmacy, but had many friends that belonged to the world of art.

Guler’s work is included in the collections of institutions worldwide, such as Paris’s National Library of France; New York’s George Eastman Museum; Das imaginäre Photo-Museum; Museum Ludwig Köln; and Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery

He won several awards for his work, including Turkey’s Photographer of the Century, 1999; Master of Leica, 1962; France’s Légion d’honneur; Lifetime Achievement Lucie Award, 2009; and Turkey’s Grand Prize of Culture and Arts, 2005. In 2004, he was give honorary fellowship by Istanbul’s Yıldız Technical University.

He celebrated his 90th birthday with the opening of a museum named after him. In January, a street in his neighborhood was also named after him.

“I have always remained loyal to Istanbul,” Ara Güler had told the French newspaper Le Monde in the interview he gave for the opening of his exhibition in Paris.

Originally a film student who studied under Muhsin Ertuğrul, he eventually abandoned cinema in favor of journalism and, in 1950, while studying economics at University of Istanbul, started working as a photojournalist at the Turkish newspaper Yeni Istanbul.

In 1958, Güler became the first correspondent for Time-Life’s Turkey branch, which opened the door to publication in a number of other international magazines.

In 1961, he was hired by Hayat magazine as its chief photographer, and during that period met Marc Riboud and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who recruited him to join Magnum Photos. His work continued on to international acclaim, appearing in exhibitions in Germany and New York.

He has received a number of awards, including Turkey’s Photographer of the Century Award, in 1999; Master of Leica, in 1962; and France’s Légion d’honneur. He has also conducted interviews with such famous historic figures as Salvador Dali and Winston Churchill.

Today, his work can be found in the National Library of France, in Paris; New York’s George Eastman Museum; Das imaginäre Photo-Museum; Museum Ludwig Köln; and Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.

Güler’s philosophy on photography attached great importance to the presence of humans in photography and considers himself a visual historian. According to him, photography should provide people with memory of their suffering and their life. He feels that art can lie but photography only reflects reality. He does not value art in photography, so he prefers photojournalism.

 

 

http://asbarez.com/175780/legendary-turkish-armenian-photographer-ara-guler-passes-away/?fbclid=IwAR2dG6VwfgGx3WcTJbXg1fHCVwzhsLGPYFPg7OcC5W5XE5uefAlEb3taqvA

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168.am

| 17:57 | November 1 2018

Category

 

 

 

 

 

‘The man who showed us Istanbul” – Orhan Pamuk remembers friend, Turkish-Armenian photographer Ara Guler in touching New York Times op-ed

| Views: 31

Ara-Guler.jpg

The New York Times has published an article by Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature Orhan Pamuk about Ara Guler, the late Turkish-Armenian photojournalist who died on October 17 at the age of 90.

Guler, who was a friend of Pamuk, was nicknamed “the Eye of Istanbul” or “the Photographer of Istanbul”.

Below are excerpts from the article:

“I first heard of Ara in the 1960s when I saw his photographs in Hayat, a widely read weekly news and gossip magazine with a strong emphasis on photography. One of my uncles edited it. Ara published portraits of writers and artists such as Picasso and Dali, and the celebrated literary and cultural figures of an older generation in Turkey such as the novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar. When Ara photographed me for the first time after the success of my novel “The Black Book,” I realized happily that I had arrived as a writer.

Ara devotedly photographed Istanbul for over half a century, continuing into the 2000s. I eagerly studied his photographs, to see in them the development and transformation of the city itself.

My friendship with Ara began in 2003, when I was consulting his archive of 900,000 photographs to research my book “Istanbul.” He had turned the large three-story home he inherited from his father, a pharmacist from the Galatasaray neighborhood in the Beyoglu district of the city, into a workshop, office and archive”, Pamuk says.

“In the early days of our friendship, we never spoke about Ara’s Armenian heritage and the suppressed, painful history of the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians — a subject that remains a veritable taboo in Turkey. I sensed that it would be difficult to speak about this harrowing subject with him, that it would put a strain on our relationship. He knew that speaking about it would make it harder for him to survive in Turkey.Over the years, he trusted me a little and occasionally brought up political subjects he wouldn’t raise with others”, Pamuk writes in the article.

“In 2005, I gave an interview where I complained that there was no freedom of thought in Turkey and we still couldn’t talk about the terrible things that were done to the Ottoman Armenians 90 years ago. The nationalist press exaggerated my comments. I was taken to court in Istanbul for insulting Turkishness, a charge that can lead to a three-year prison sentence.

Two years later, my friend the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot and killed in Istanbul, in the middle of the street, for using the words “Armenian genocide.” Certain newspapers began to hint that I might be next. Because of the death threats I was receiving, the charges that had been brought against me and the vicious campaign in the nationalist press, I started spending more time abroad, in New York. I would return to my office in Istanbul for brief stays, without telling anyone I was back.

On one of those brief visits home from New York, during some of the darkest days after Hrant Dink’s assassination, I walked into my office and the phone immediately started ringing. In those days I never picked up my office phone. The ringing would pause occasionally, but then it would start again, on and on. Uneasy, I eventually picked up. Straight away, I recognized Ara’s voice. “Oh, you’re back! I am coming over now,” he said, and hung up without waiting for my response.

Fifteen minutes later, Ara walked into my office. He was out of breath and cursing everything and everyone, in his characteristic manner. Then he embraced me with his huge frame and started to cry. Those who knew Ara, knew how fond he was of swearing and forceful masculine expressions, will understand my amazement at seeing him cry like that. He kept on swearing and telling me, “They can’t touch you, those people!”

His tears weren’t slowing down. The more he cried, the more I was gripped by a strange sense of guilt and felt paralyzed. After crying for a very long time, Ara finally calmed down, and then, as if this had been the whole purpose of his visit to my office, he drank a glass of water and left”.

Hrant Dink was the editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian Agos newspaper. He was shot dead outside his office in 2007. Although the gunman was apprehended, the court proceedings resume up to this day as the investigation hasn’t revealed the sponsors behind the murder.

“I no longer felt the urge to ask him about his grandfathers and grandmothers. The great photographer had already told me everything through his tears.

Ara had hoped for a democracy where individuals could speak freely of their murdered ancestors, or at least freely weep for them. Turkey never became that democracy. The success of the past 15 years, a period of economic growth built on borrowed money, has been used not to broaden the reach of democracy but to restrict freedom of thought even further.

And after all this growth and all this construction, Ara Guler’s old Istanbul has become — to use the title of one of his books — a “Lost Istanbul”,” Pamuk concludes.

 

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