Miniature slide show of Istanbul

I first learned photography when I was six-years-old; my father was my tutor and he provided me with an old TLR (twin lens reflex) camera that looked a lot like this one.

Back in those ancient days almost all the pictures we took were slides.  I am guessing that most people who are reading this blog have never even seen a slide and probably haven't seen a slide show either, although, if you think about it, PowerPoint is really nothing more than a fancy, modernized version of the old-fashioned slide show.  The three pictures below are slides.  You would put them in a projector and the images would be projected onto a screen, or maybe even a wall that was painted white.

When I was a kid, we would go to people's houses for dinner and after we finished our meals, as a "reward" for stopping by to visit, our hosts would put on slide shows for our "entertainment." Maybe we might see images of their recent vacation to Yellowstone Park, or their visit to the Central Oregon fossil beds, or worst of all their recent family reunion of relatives we had never even met. I can remember the agony of sitting in the dark through lengthy 400-slide productions of uninteresting images that elicited approximately the same intensity of pain as getting one's teeth pulled except, sadly, our hosts never furnished laughing gas or Novocaine. Now that old memories have been reawakened, I suddenly remember it wasn't the images that were the most painful, but the narration:  "That's Uncle Bud when he was a kid.  Do you remember him?  I think that slide is when he killed the gopher out behind the utility shed. Uncle Bud tried killing that gopher for three months, you know. His first wife, Aunt Alice, was one of the Haasenfelders from Southern Idaho.  Her family, they were the farmers, not the Haasenfelders who were the butchers......"  I think you get the excruciating idea.

My dear reader, I have approximately 150 images of Istanbul that I haven't posted anywhere that I wanted to post for your enjoyment.  Then I remembered my personal history of photography, particularly the slide show. That's when I decided that I would err on the side of empathy and kindness and force myself to choose only six images, which I have uploaded below. That is one advantage to the Digital Era of Photography. It has rendered the slide show extinct and has transferred the control of viewing options from the creator of the image to the consumer.  I will no longer lure you to my home with the promise of dinner only to hold you hostage in order to force you to see my images; instead you can now choose to view them, or not, whenever you please. Sometimes we think the world is on a rapid, downward descent toward Armageddon, but this more-humane way of taking in images just proves that there are actually many things that have been improving over time.  Therefore, in the happy spirit of progress and advancement enjoy this miniature, digital slide show of Istanbul.

Sharpening knives on a Monday morning, near Hagia Sophia

Tourists inside the Blue Mosque.  Most tourists in the summer come ill-prepared to visit the mosque, in their shorts and uncovered arms, as they are oblivious to the customs of modesty in holy places valued by their hosts.  This picture shows tourists struggling about in the skirt-like coverings that the mosque has provided for them.  Men have a particularly difficult time walking, as they really don't know how to move gracefully in this attire.  It seemed a perfect symbol of the failure of Western civilization to learn about others and how to properly approach peoples and religions that are unfamiliar.  

The obelisk of Theodosius was originally the ancient obelisk of Pharaoh Thutmose III.  It was re-erected in the Hippodrome of Constantinople by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I in the 4th Century AD.



The Lighthouse of Ahirkapi, built in 1755 and renovated in 1857, is located on John F. Kennedy Avenue.

This room is situated inside Topkapi Palace, the palace of the Ottoman sultans.  This is the room where princes were circumcised.  I would make a cutting remark, but I don't think that would be appropriate.  Notice the Delft tiles on the walls. It proves that the Dutch are a pragmatic people, who even 400 years ago, did not let a little thing like religious difference hamper their trade.



This is the interior of the church of St. Irene.  Actually this was the first church ever built in Istanbul, construction ordered by Constantine I in the 4th Century.  The original church was destroyed, but this version remains largely intact from its 8th Century renovations.  This is the only Christian church of the Byzantine era that wasn't converted to a mosque, because it happened to be located inside the walls of the Topkapi Palace grounds controlled by the sultans.  St. Irene spent the next several hundred years as an armory and a royal military museum.  That's why the Christian iconography you see here has remained intact for over a millennium.