This book is a vivid photographic record of daily life in Istanbul from the 1940s to the 1980s. Captured through the unerring lens of the award winning Ara Guler the Eye of Istanbul it reflects the citys melancholy aesthetic as it oscillates between tradition & modernity. Gulers remarkable duotone photographs are accompanied by evocative commentaries from Orhan Pamuk another leading figure in Turkish culture. Both writer & photographer each held in their youth the ambition of becoming a painter. Here each in his own way paints a brushless picture of his hometown & captures through image & word its very soul.