Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest

12.09.2024 - 09.02.2025

Ara Güler - On Life

Ara Güler, born in Istanbul in 1928, is widely celebrated both nationally and internationally as a master of the arts of photo-journalism and photography. Throughout his life, Ara Güler travelled to countless places in the world, experienced different geographies, and bore witness to many historical events. Most of all he photographed the landscapes and peoples of his land. Throughout his career surpassing 70 years, he has been a visual recorder of modern Turkish history, observing the people, architecture and geography of the country and his native Istanbul in which he was born and raised, witnessing its change over the years.  One of the most distinctive features in Güler’s photographs is the human element. As real characters from everyday life, the figures featured in Ara Güler’s photographs are individuals who we all recognize and with whom we can identify. The exhibition brings together a selection of the artist’s most well-known black and white photographs from the streets of Istanbul and across Turkey. With the belief that “there could be no life without people”, Ara Güler shapes the straightforward reality in front of him into thoughtful and poetic frames, serving as reflections of the period and place in which he lived.