“To be in Istanbul is to live between two worlds, and to belong to neither completely.”
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City

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In this city, East and West do not meet; they intertwine. Cultures overlap, histories fold into one another, and contradictions either coexist with ease or collide. It is a vibrant place suspended between memory and change, where tradition and modernity mix.

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My photographs act as notes. They capture the texture of everyday life before the full wave of gentrification reshaped the city's landscape.

Shot in black and white, they trace the faces, gestures, and streets, from the city's center to its suburbs, where the working-class has been marginalised. Since my visit, much of this fabric has been erased. Entire districts once home to low-income families have been demolished or redeveloped into sanitized, profit-driven versions of the city. Polished façades and modern towers have been built over the traces of lived histories. The Istanbul seen here is now a memory of a city displaced by its own reinvention.

   

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