Where East Meets West

IN THE YEAR 2010, Istanbul is scheduled as the joint European Capital of Culture, along with Essen and Pécs. Located on both sides of the Bosphorus, and thus being on two continents at once, Istanbul is literally the place where East meets West. And in Alex Webb’s stark portrayal, it is a battle that the West is winning hands down and where no one at all is the victor. Orphan Pamuk’s sensitive essay on his native city and its gradual dissolution, corrupted by the banalities of modern life, makes heart rending reading. The 2006 Nobel Laureate for Literature was the ideal contributor for this task and Pamuk introduces his text with an explanation of the Turkish penchant for Hüzün, a particularly intellectual form of melancholy familiar to the Muslim, and which orientates the reader to accept the unexpected in Webb’s images.

Alex Webb is a Magnum photographer born in San Francisco. He has eschewed the Istanbul of the tourist, of colourful minarets and mosques, of quaint national costume. Webb’s vision is of a modern city of urban dreams and disappointments - and of shell suits, trainers and disillusion. Glimpsed, almost accidentally, are the remnants of a glorious history, peeping out between contemporary concrete apartment blocks, behind gaudy advertisement billboards and reflected in shop windows. Or again, hinted at in the hurrying older women in their chadors and moustachioed men, standing aimlessly around in the golden afternoon sun. It is a chaos of crumbling antiquity and flaking paintwork, congested streets and uncontrollable wiring. But amidst the throb of rusty barges and sleek ferries, the heartbeat of the city continues unabated with that indomitable spirit of the East and the innate pride of the local community. These are not pretty pictures, but they deserve a close scrutiny, for what is revealed is much more than the sum of their parts.