Depicting Istanbul - Introduction to History of Visuality in Turkey

Two different but related works that share the
same body back to back like a mirror image,
they can be called the “Seamese” twins of the
publishing world. Ugur Tanyeli’s writings on
“Introduction to History of Visuality in Turkey”
and Ali Taptik’s photographs “Depicting
Istanbul”. What the first tells theoretically, the
second one analyzes visually. Where Tanyeli
talks about a shortage on visual production,
Taptik shows a new Istanbul thus drawing
attention to contemporary enrichment of
visuality. He is showing an uncanny, vast urban
landscape that is alien to its own inhabitants.
Tanyeli is explaining historical visual production
practices, Tapt?k’s photographs are depicting
a new situation with visual necessities and
possibilities. We see unfamiliar un-estheticized
Istanbul or Istanbuls, but more importantly it is
not reduced the known contemporary urban
issues. Thus this twin book wants to show a
different image to those who think of Miniature
as historical visual production as well as to
those think of the contemporary visuality only
deriving from the beautiful landscapes or urban
conflict photographs. Designed and edited by
Bulent Erkmen

Depicting Istanbul is created by
recontextualization and reintrepretation of the
visual material collected for Ali Taptik’s series
“Kaza ve Kader”, “Familiar Strangers” and
“Nothing Surprising”

Pages: 394 pages
Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth):
165mmx190mmx30mm
Cover: Paperback
Binding: perfect bound
Process: offset-printed
Color: color
Edition 1000