[HN Gopher] Streets Like Living Rooms: Orhan Pamuk's Photographs...
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Streets Like Living Rooms: Orhan Pamuk's Photographs of Istanbul
Author : Thevet
Score : 23 points
Date : 2021-02-12 05:10 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thepointmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thepointmag.com)
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I'm surprised to see photos of women with their heads, arms, and
| legs showing. Is this common in Turkey? If so, where else in the
| Middle East?
| gnulinux wrote:
| It is _of course_ very common and is the great majority (
| >99.999% in some places) and less common (maybe 50%) in others.
| Turkey has a very strange view in the US imho, I was from
| California and when I went to Istanbul to work in a startup
| (funny&long story) my friends thought I'm going to a desert in
| the middle of nowhere or something; when Istanbul is literally
| the biggest metropolitan center in Europe. The reality and
| American people's image of Turkey are extremely mismatched.
|
| I wrote about my views on Istanbul and Turkey here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25164997
| keiferski wrote:
| Turkey spent most of the twentieth century instituting
| secularism at every level of society, so violently that a
| backlash eventually erupted against it.
|
| I'm not particularly sure how I feel about it, as the issue
| is complex, but I do think that it's unfortunate that modern
| Turks are unable to read their own Ottoman history due to the
| change from Arabic to Latin script.
| et-al wrote:
| Turkey is a secular country. Ataturk did much to westernise his
| country.
|
| I find religious conservatism in many countries to coincide
| more with a family's economic status.
| ACAVJW4H wrote:
| Yes this is absolutely common in Turkey. Please do not believe
| in the press trying to portray Turkey as being totally overrun
| by a fundamentalist autocratic regime.
|
| In fact even these photographs are portraying the poorest and
| probably some of the most conservative neighborhoods of
| Istanbul.
|
| There are 10's millions of Turks who are secular and striving
| to keep modernity alive in this part of the world.
| merth wrote:
| yes, it is. funny thing, 20 years ago people who wear scarf
| couldn't go into public places such as universities. Turkey is
| a laicite country in constitution, got relaxed after erdogan
| got into power, now more like secular country, people can use
| scarf in public places. west usually has islamistic picture of
| turkey due to constant propaganda. in reality, I was surprised
| when I have come to london and saw so many people with burqa,
| and this was first time I saw a burqa in real life.
| keiferski wrote:
| No mention of Pamuk's Nobel Prize winning novel _My Name is Red_
| , which is all about Istanbul and the underrated art form of
| Islamic miniatures.
|
| I came across this book in a bizarre way, but if I told you, you
| probably wouldn't believe me. Let's just call it a "completely
| unexplainable coincidence."
|
| In any case, it's a really fascinating look at an art form
| virtually no one in the Western world has heard of, yet played a
| huge role in the various Turkish, Persian, Mughal/Indian and
| Arabic empires. All set in 1500s Istanbul. Highly recommended.
|
| One idea from it that has stuck with me: the Ottoman miniaturists
| criticized Western forms of drawing perspective, as they
| presented the world from the view of a human being and not from
| an omniscient God figure's viewpoint. Hence the top-down
| viewpoint of most miniatures. I had always associated the
| progression toward realism as an "improvement" over pre-
| perspective paintings, but the omniscient viewpoint really makes
| a lot of sense conceptually.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_miniature
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(page generated 2021-02-12 23:00 UTC)