![]() I explained that film is about a Lebanese Armenian character who is a poet and visiting Istanbul for the first time as the grandchild of Armenians who left Istanbul on the eve of the Armenian Genocide a century ago, and that he would be talking with Sako Arian the man personifying the character of the Lebanese Armenian poet. While sipping coffee, I began telling him how I had known him since I was a little boy in Aleppo, after a few sentences he stopped me in his Turkish inflicted Armenian “Պօշ բաներ են, ինչ կուզէզկոր, աշխատինք պիտի նէ, ժամանակ մի կորսունցուներ – meaningless stuff, what do you want, if we are going to work, don’t waste time”. It seemed that we have known each other for a long time although we had just greeted each other for the first time a moment ago. What an alert and energetic man he is at the age of 83. He was a bit rough, he seemed to be an edgy old man with low tolerance and hurried yet somehow warm and charming, “Did you have coffee? Let’s grab a table” he said. Gurbuz and Deniz and the main actor and thanked him to accept being filmed. I shook his hand and introduced myself, N. He asked the café staff where were the people who would be meeting him and they politely pointed at us. The man arrived on time and went hovering like a butterfly over each table greeting customers making sure they were satisfied. Ara’s through his café had created a meeting space. Yaşar turned out to be an art director for TV and film productions, but he has also rented out the café from Ara Güler who arrived within minutes after Haldun’s farewell. Haldun departed giving me his phone number in Istanbul in case I needed anything. He called a tall bearded man named Yaşar. I told him that I was making a film and I was in the café to do an interview with Ara Güler, he said “Let me introduce you the manager of the café, he is my nephew”. The assistant camera person Deniz Şengenç, the main actor of the film Sako Arian and I arrived to the café ahead of time, we had hardly greeted each other when I was surprised at the coincidence to see a colleague from Dubai named Haldun Z., holding a beautiful newborn baby in his arms. Karabey, making me happy to have a tripod at last. Gurbuz had called and said that she had arrived at the café with the tripod she secured from filmmaker Mr. and we had to be there on time, he is known to be temperamental and independent minded, he could change his mind and leave if we are not there on time. “… We had to rush, we had an appointment with Ara Güler in his “Ara Café” on Istiklal Ave. Seven years and seven day ago this is what I have written in the diary I kept during the filming I was lucky, few of the people helping me with the production knew him personally and that he was still spunky and that they would secure an appointment to film him and they did, although with warnings that he may not show up, they he may not talk, that he may leave in the middle of the filming, he was moody I was told. The Image has stayed with me ever since.ĭecades later, I was in Istanbul to shoot my film “I Left My Shoes in Istanbul”, I wanted to make sure that Ara Güler the photographer now known as “the Eye of Istanbul” would be in the film. ![]() The image was sharp in contrast, the blacks were charcoal and the whites were shiny silver, later I would learn that this was a mastered art that only few photographers could reach while they printed their photographs in a dark room lit by a small red lamp. One of Ara’s photographs attached to the article was a B&W image of a coble stone street in Istanbul that looked like the street out of my window. Leafing through the colorful pages of the “Hay Endanik- Armenian Family” magazine I came upon an article about a photographer in Istanbul named Ara Güler. ![]() I was seated on the edge of the sofa situated by the large window that looked on the very narrow coble stone street of our house (Now bombed and non-existing due the in the current war in Syria), in “Bab Al Nasr – Gate of Victory” district of the old city. It was a rainy autumn day in Aleppo, I had been given a copy of a magazine published in Venice, Italy by the Mekhitarist congregation. I was learning how to use the Zenith camera a gift from my godfather who had purchased it in Soviet Armenia during his recent trip. The story of my meeting the giant photographer took place many years ago, in Aleppo when I was a budding youngster fully in love with photography, a passion too big to be understood at that small age. Mgrdich Ara Derderian, known as Ara Güler Passed away today at the age of 90. Ara Güler’s images will live on, he will live thorugh the people who’s lives he touched. Ara, who for decades, watched the world through the veiwfinder and clicked for images thousands of times to imortalize humanity hus shut his eyes and covered the lens of his cameras for good.
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