Turkish people characterize new lure of the East
Güncelleme Tarihi:
by Salleb B. Smith
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Ocak 03, 2009 00:00
Born and raised in Atlanta, where I still live, some of my travels have taken me along the Nile to Abu Simbel, on horseback to the temples of Petra and on foot to a monastery atop Patmos in Greece. In 2006 I joined my daughter, then an AP journalist, in Jerusalem. She shared Israel’s vast landscape with me.
That same year my daughter married a Turkish filmmaker and moved to Istanbul. My grandson, Max Ali, was born in 2007 and is the main reason I have traveled here seven times in three years. My first impression of Istanbul was on a fine October day along the Bosporus where the skyline was filled with shimmering mosques, elaborate wooden houses and palaces. Now, my friend who works at the Ali Baba restaurant in Beşiktaş won’t hear of me paying for my daily tea. The scruffy vendor downstairs waved my money away when I tried to buy an umbrella the other day.
Women setting out in Istanbul
This week Max Ali and I strolled through the Pera Museum’s permanent exhibit. Covered women traveling by boat along the Bosporus and in carriages toted by men or pulled by oxen are featured in paintings that offer a view of the city from the perspective of European artists. One can almost feel the dirt beneath a carriage passing a row of wooden houses, a rare glimpse of where people lived outside of palaces and aristocracy.
The "Lure of the East" exhibit of British Orientalist Paintings upstairs brought me back to several places I had visited; sometimes to the exact spot such as a rooftop view from Old Jerusalem or the single slender passage that opens onto the spectacle of Petra.
Accompanying me on the trip to Petra years ago was my dear friend Bonnie, who had lost her husband, the love of her life, earlier that year. With the sight of the ancient city carved into of the colorful walls around us, she sat crying. As the sun hung low, an elderly Bedouin woman and a young girl ascended behind bell-clanging goats from a passage that seemed kilometers away. The twosome approached my friend and me in the twilight and sat beside us. The girl, no older than six, placed a baby goat in Bonnie’s lap. The elderly woman had tears in her eyes as well. A setting in an Indiana Jones film, Petra defies attempts by an 18th century painter or archeologist action hero to unearth Middle Eastern treasures.
This week I also went to Istanbul Modern to see the photography exhibit "Human Conditions" where everyday Turks are depicted in two curious formats. Photographer Sıtkı Kösemen took photos of people "playing possum". Süreyya Yılmaz Dernek and Ergün Turan asked people to pose in front of an old Istanbul souvenir backdrop. Faces of life and pretend death are juxtaposed on adjacent walls, a long way from the scenes of decorative Ottoman life at the Pera.
These Turkish photographers captured Istanbulus, some of whom could be from anywhere, in near life-sized interpretations of "playing dead". Their faces at rest, they seem to reflect a relaxed state, perhaps how people wished to see themselves as "dead". The bodies themselves are comfortable, almost asleep. In a couple of the photos, women’s underpants are exposed. These intimate portraits of modern-day people in Turkey are multi-dimensional and unexpected, providing access to the viewer that a foreigner might not otherwise have. With romanticized "forbidden" depictions of harem women from centuries past, the European artists aimed to capture the allure of the inaccessible. But Kösemen does it on an individual level, where culture is present but beside the point.
The Pera’s probing look at British Orientalist paintings is defined by the dimensions of the European view of people and places in this land Ğ and by the market for art at the time that seemed to present the Eastern image as consumable and exotic.
Perhaps my son’s mother reading my coffee grinds is as exotic for me as it was for the painter who painted harem women doing the same. The difference is that my perspective is of her eyes and words. Our children are married. We know each other.
Women setting out in Istanbul
This week Max Ali and I strolled through the Pera Museum’s permanent exhibit. Covered women traveling by boat along the Bosporus and in carriages toted by men or pulled by oxen are featured in paintings that offer a view of the city from the perspective of European artists. One can almost feel the dirt beneath a carriage passing a row of wooden houses, a rare glimpse of where people lived outside of palaces and aristocracy.
The "Lure of the East" exhibit of British Orientalist Paintings upstairs brought me back to several places I had visited; sometimes to the exact spot such as a rooftop view from Old Jerusalem or the single slender passage that opens onto the spectacle of Petra.
Accompanying me on the trip to Petra years ago was my dear friend Bonnie, who had lost her husband, the love of her life, earlier that year. With the sight of the ancient city carved into of the colorful walls around us, she sat crying. As the sun hung low, an elderly Bedouin woman and a young girl ascended behind bell-clanging goats from a passage that seemed kilometers away. The twosome approached my friend and me in the twilight and sat beside us. The girl, no older than six, placed a baby goat in Bonnie’s lap. The elderly woman had tears in her eyes as well. A setting in an Indiana Jones film, Petra defies attempts by an 18th century painter or archeologist action hero to unearth Middle Eastern treasures.
This week I also went to Istanbul Modern to see the photography exhibit "Human Conditions" where everyday Turks are depicted in two curious formats. Photographer Sıtkı Kösemen took photos of people "playing possum". Süreyya Yılmaz Dernek and Ergün Turan asked people to pose in front of an old Istanbul souvenir backdrop. Faces of life and pretend death are juxtaposed on adjacent walls, a long way from the scenes of decorative Ottoman life at the Pera.
These Turkish photographers captured Istanbulus, some of whom could be from anywhere, in near life-sized interpretations of "playing dead". Their faces at rest, they seem to reflect a relaxed state, perhaps how people wished to see themselves as "dead". The bodies themselves are comfortable, almost asleep. In a couple of the photos, women’s underpants are exposed. These intimate portraits of modern-day people in Turkey are multi-dimensional and unexpected, providing access to the viewer that a foreigner might not otherwise have. With romanticized "forbidden" depictions of harem women from centuries past, the European artists aimed to capture the allure of the inaccessible. But Kösemen does it on an individual level, where culture is present but beside the point.
The Pera’s probing look at British Orientalist paintings is defined by the dimensions of the European view of people and places in this land Ğ and by the market for art at the time that seemed to present the Eastern image as consumable and exotic.
Perhaps my son’s mother reading my coffee grinds is as exotic for me as it was for the painter who painted harem women doing the same. The difference is that my perspective is of her eyes and words. Our children are married. We know each other.