Cityscapes 1 (2010) – seemingly an ordinary collection of touristy photographs of Istanbul is made truly ordinary by removing one element that upon first glance generously gives away the city’s character and history. Each shot taken at the crack of dawn is embedded in a narrative that invites the audience to imagine waking up one morning to find the city changed overnight, literally. Since a long time the minarets have been seen as symbols of political Islam in the Western imagination. In the Muslim world, minarets are part of the wider socio-cultural and aesthetic framework, standing above the winding alleys below, as they are, silent spectators to the bustling market places around, listening from the heights the daily conversations of the multitudes scattered on the ground. One may imagine that the minarets of Istanbul are its memory organs that allow the city to recognize itself at each sunrise.
