I shook his hand and introduced myself, N. He asked the café staff where were the people who would be meeting him and they politely pointed at us. The man arrived on time and went hovering like a butterfly over each table greeting customers making sure they were satisfied. Through his café, Ara had created a meeting space. Yaşar turned out to be an art director for television and film productions, but he has also rented out the café from Ara Güler who arrived within minutes after Haldun’s farewell. Haldun departed giving me his phone number in Istanbul in case I needed anything. He is my nephew.’ He called a tall, bearded man named Yaşar. I told him that I was making a film and I was in the café to do an interview with Ara Güler, he said ‘Let me introduce you to the manager of the café. We had hardly greeted each other when I was surprised at the coincidence to see a colleague from Dubai named Haldun Z., holding a beautiful newborn baby in his arms. The assistant camera person Deniz Şengenç, the main actor of the film Sako Arian and I arrived to the café ahead of time. Karabey, making me happy to have a tripod at last. Gurbuz had called and said that she had arrived at the café with the tripod she secured from filmmaker Mr. and we had to be there on time, he is known to be temperamental and independent minded, he could change his mind and leave if we are not there on time. We had an appointment with Ara Güler in his Ara Café on Istiklal Ave. Seven years and seven days ago, this is what I had written in the diary I kept during the filming: They warned, however, that he may not show up, that he may not talk, that he may leave in the middle of the filming, and that he was moody. They said he was still spunky and that they would secure an appointment to film him. I was lucky few of the people helping in the production knew him personally. The image has stayed with me ever since.ĭecades later, I was in Istanbul to shoot my film “I Left My Shoes in Istanbul.” I wanted to make sure that Ara Güler, the photographer now known as “the Eye of Istanbul,” would be in the film. Later I would learn that this was a mastered art that only few photographers could reach while they printed their photographs in a dark room lit by a small red lamp. The image was sharp in contrast the blacks were charcoal and the whites were shiny silver. One of Ara’s photographs attached to the article was a black and white image of a cobblestone street in Istanbul that looked like the street out of my window. Leafing through the colorful pages of the “Hay Endanik” (“Armenian Family”) magazine I came upon an article about a photographer in Istanbul named Ara Güler. I was seated on the edge of the sofa situated by the large window that looked on the very narrow cobblestone street of our house (now bombed and non-existent due to the current war in Syria) in “Bab Al Nasr – Gate of Victory” district of the old city. I had been given a copy of a magazine published in Venice, Italy by the Mekhitarist congregation.
#THE EYES OF ARA PHOTOGRAPHS HOW TO#
I was learning how to use the Zenith camera, a gift from my godfather who had purchased it in Soviet Armenia during a recent trip. The story of my meeting the giant photographer took place many years ago, in Aleppo when I was a budding youngster fully in love with photography, a passion too big to be understood at that small age. Mgrdich Ara Derderian, known as Ara Güler passed away today at the age of 90.
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