The last night I played spin the bottle:
I remember leaving the party. I started to walk home like Jim Hutton in the movie Walk Don't Run (1966) -. By the the time I was a block away, my gait morphed into an Usain Bolt imitation. I was running through the dark streets as if a thousand shadows were chasing me. It is a neverending out of body experience to recollect the fears of a child… I was eleven.
When one is young it might be uncommon for a rich imagination to recall the Bible’s gentle mentoring about magical truths: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,…” It would be appropriate for young and old to consider while traveling the unknown.
Magical truths have lured me towards life’s possibilities in ways Monty Hall game show contestants dreamed what might be behind curtains One, Two, or Three?
Today while chasing more important magical truths hidden among the shadows, I realize my photography empowers me to walk alone with no fears, along thoroughfares and into darkened alleyways. Bits and pieces from that childhood remain.
Photography Visual Mentors:
I can sit in my apartment window everyday of my life as if my camera, soul and eyes have been transported into the Edward Hopper canvas: “Red Painting Woman on Bed Looking out the Window”. My body remains still. My eyes are like a hawks’ panning the horizon for something to eat for something that matters.
I can imagine making hundreds of photography books by merely shooting from my window overlooking a specific New York footprint. I would hardly need to move a few small measurements from my windows to capture a hawks’ meal with my eyes and camera in place.
“It doesn’t matter that the psychology of my photography or Hoppers’ psychology are not as one. But the nature of this youth evolving into a visual person and marrying the light and shadow living inside a Hopper, is scary. Yet it is the bedrock for what I need to be apart of my everyday.
As we landed in Istanbul I asked myself why I need to travel on to far away continents. An immediate answer might be the excitement one discovers when you land in a city married to its rich ancient architecture, and the architecture of the living and what may become.
I soon found myself stepping down from the unique enclave “Akaretler Row Houses”. I could almost smell the Bosphorus Strait as it posed almost like a periwinkle sand painting framed against the hills of Europe. I saw the Bosphorus Bridge to my right, the Sultanahmet Palace to my left and seemingly all the significance of Istanbul as I was descending tap dancing down an imaginary double helix stairway from antiquity into modernism. The twisting breezes stirred me as I stared across the “Straits” white caps. Europe and Asia were connected like ascending/descending landscapes. It was mysteriously exhilarating.
I felt a cinematic pull from John Ford’s and John Waynes “The Searchers. I felt a similar pull from David Lean’s and Peter O’Tooles “Lawrence of Arabia”. (I have used these films for prior visual support in my blogs). Each film has crucial narrative moments of tremendous expanses. The films have contributed to my raison d’etre as a photographer. They confirm for me that without going forward you are not traveling you are not discovering. They allow my sensibilities to share a wee bit of bipolar sense: Hopper painterly truths on one side, and heroic cinematic sequences on another.
For me to conquer Istanbul I would need all the visual mentoring I could conjure up.
As I met the Bosphorus I heard the chants from the Minarets all across Istanbul. It was one of the few times that the sounds passing through the skies pillowed my anxieties. I remember once in Samarkand, Uzbekistan the chants airing on whacko static speakers made my ears feel like they were being boxed by punctuated cacophony all day long. But today’s Islamic tranquility chanting begged for calm. I began to think about pictures.
My Istanbul expectations were high. For the weeks I was there I was bowled over by the exceptional. It seemed that all of the relics of Turkey’s ancient history appeared to be present in my mind and eyes. In a glance, all of Istanbul felt like one Grand Bazaar begging to be discovered. My camera found the contemporary and the ancient, the charm and the magnificent. But my lens seemed to rest on mosques and palaces and the trappings of hundreds and thousands of years before this day.
Ancient markets ancient prisons are the discovered luxuries of the adventurous mind. Rugs, and tapestries, were hidden in plain sight under every artifact overwhelmed by man made dust and dust accrued through the centuries. Your eyes move furtively through the Bazaar, furtively through the streets, furtively behind every window display, furtively under every stone you step upon. You want something you didn’t have before. You want a piece of someone’s past and your present. You know the game: You discover something in the present to show someone in the future about the past. You travel to see what others have, how others live, but you might really travel to discover something about yourself. The vault in your mind is waiting to be unlocked to lock something anew inside.
It just might be the “Hookah” talking.
Istanbul’s Colony of Cats:
Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke
“…She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly”.
On our last evening in Istanbul, we sat listening to film noir jazz in a stylish Turkish brasserie. We had a terrace view of a landscape and evening lights. After a bit, the owner brought us a couple of glasses of wine to compliment what we were already drinking. I invited him to join me and my wife for some wine.
We shared our dining and wine experiences with him. He said that we had an exceptional itinerary.
We told him our adventures had so many unexpected wine and culinary pleasures.
We raved about walking the streets and the pure pleasure of discovery.
Then we mentioned the cats. Cats live on every doorstep, windowsill, rooftops,and a host of unimaginable comfortable spots that clearly say, “Do Not Disturb”.
If George Orwell had visited Istanbul I might imagine a book title something revolutionary: “The Rise of the Cats”, “Humans Beware”, “The Rights of Felines”.
We chatted a bit about the history of cats among the ancients and in present day folklore.
We mentioned that from our dining table, we could see what looked like thousands of cats that seemed to call the park their home. We wondered what the residents of the homes along the park thought about the smells and noises. ( I personally love cats) but the pure quantity was astonishing.
The proprietor said, that the cats are almost like citizens. Nobody bothers them and they don’t bother anyone…”though”.
There used to be the town crier. He ranted and raved about the cats. He tried to get the cats removed from the park. He went to the government. When they would not help him, he took matters into his own hands. He carted away and tried to kill as many cats as possible.
When the local residents who lived along the park or used the park for activities got wind of this story, they were furious. One night they took matters into their own hands and ambushed the “town crier”. Most people suspect that retribution was in order. The man was never seen again. You might imagine what happened to him. The story had some frighteningly similarities to a number of historical troubling events. The owner swore the story was true.
Why do I mention this story? It seems like it might be analogous to an “ Aesop's Fables ” or “Watership Down “, ”Animal Farm “, or a dozen books by Gabriel García Márquez
The magical truths may be just outside our front door in the safety of what we know. It is likely that the unimaginable stories will occur while traveling afoot crossing new boundaries.
