Ara Guler’s ‘Kumkapi Fishermen’ exhibition opens to visitors

‘Kumkapi Fishermen’ exhibition at the Ara Guler Museum presents Ara Guler’s iconic series capturing the lives of Armenian fishermen in Kumkapi, featuring both photographs and accompanying articles from 1952, offering visitors a glimpse into Guler’s early career and the enduring charm of Kumkapi’s fishing community, with a special focus on the recovery of deteriorated color photographs

The exhibition “Kumkapi Fishermen,” which focuses on photographer Ara Guler’s series of articles “Kumkapi with Armenian Fishermen” published in the Jamanak newspaper on May 21-27, 1952, opened at the Ara Guler Museum at Yapi Kredi Bomontiada.

Dogus Group Art Advisor Cagla Sarac told an AA correspondent that “Kumkapi Fishermen” is one of Ara Guler’s most important and cherished works, along with Aphrodisias.

Pointing out that Guler signed this project when he was 24 years old, Sarac said, “Guler realized this photo-interview series for the Jamanak Newspaper for 7 days in 1952. He took the photographs and wrote the texts for this series. In addition to the photographs published in the newspaper, we have also included articles here, with Vartan Ozinyan writing the first and last day’s articles and Ara Guler writing the remaining 5 days. In fact, for photography lovers who follow Ara Guler, the “Kumkapi Fishermen” series is a well-known work. In this series, a photograph showing Dacar Reis on a boat at sea is one of Ara Guler’s classics. In this early work of Ara Guler, it is possible to see where his career would evolve in the future.

Color films deteriorated and Kumkapi remained in black and white memories

Emphasizing that Guler continued to photograph the region, which he visited many times until the Kumkapı fishermen’s shelters were demolished, Sarac said:

“Ara Guler spent a lot of time with the fishermen. He also photographed their daily lives and went fishing with them at night. Therefore, we have photographs taken in different periods. The early works of this series are in black and white, but later they were taken with color film.” Ara Bey describes the contrast here in his book “Kumkapi Armenian Fishermen” published by Aras Publishing as follows: “The color films deteriorated and Kumkapi remained in black and white.” The materials that Ara Guler says deteriorated are at the Ara Guler Archive Research Center. Our friends in the center’s conservation department started the process of recovering these photographs, and some of them were saved. In this exhibition, we have a surprise for our visitors, some recovered color photographs.”

We paid attention to Ara Guler’s choices and compositions

Cagla Sarac invited those who are interested in fishing, the history of Istanbul, and those who love Istanbul and Ara Guler to the exhibition.

The exhibition, which includes previously unexhibited photographs of Kumkapi from Guler’s archive, examples of contact prints showing his editorial choices and ephemera, are on exhibit until October 27.

Source: Newsroom