Istanbul has always existed in a state of suspension—caught between remembering its past and inhabiting its present. Unable to fully embrace what has been lost, yet uncertain of what it is becoming, the city drifts through layers of memory, contradiction, and reinvention. Like its inhabitants, it continually negotiates its own identity.
For ten years, I wandered through Istanbul with a Polaroid camera, allowing the city to reveal itself one instant at a time. Every photograph in this body of work was made on original Polaroid film. The medium itself became inseparable from the project. Each exposure exists as a singular object—fragile, irreversible, and impossible to replicate. Its uniqueness echoes the fleeting nature of memory and the unrepeatable encounters that shape our relationship with a place.
This project is, in many ways, the story of a city told through a point-and-shoot camera. The simplicity of the camera stood in contrast to the complexity of the city. It encouraged instinct over control, chance over perfection. The resulting images resist spectacle; instead, they linger in the quiet spaces where everyday life, absence, and memory intersect.
Rather than documenting Istanbul as a definitive portrait, these photographs trace an intimate dialogue between the city and myself. They are fragments of walks, encounters, disappearances, and moments that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Together, they form a visual archive of a city in constant transformation—where personal memory and collective history become inseparable.
More than a document of Istanbul, this project reflects on the fragile relationship between photography and time. Just as the city continues to change beyond recognition, every Polaroid carries the trace of a moment that can never exist again. In that sense, both the city and the photograph become singular, vulnerable, and irreplaceable.