As part of the event series “Nimm Platz – Kultur am Neumarkt” (Take a seat – Culture at Neumarkt), Cologne's Cultural Office invited the Fotobuch-Quartett to hold its own event in the temporary pavilion. The FBQ opted for a single theme: all four photo books deal with Cologne's twin city Istanbul. Frank Dürrach and Damian Zimmermann invited Turkish-born photographer Sebahat Sahverdi as their guest.
The first book of the evening is "Istanbul" by Ara Güler, arguably Turkey's most famous photographer, who was also nicknamed “the eye of Istanbul.” The book opens with a text by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and mainly features images of the Turkish metropolis from the 1940s to the 1980s.
