possibilities of istanbul

This book is a visual and textual approach to the city of istanbul. The visual approach happens through photographic collages.

The textual level consists of english translations of contemporary turkish poetry. The book tries to approach istanbul as a semiotic jungle, containing two leves of information: the typographic signs on the one hand, the visual signs on the other. The pictorial level opens a complex field of associations and is brought into relationship with the poems via a numeric guidance system. The visual interpretation of urban space becomes like a backdrop, whereby the relationship between text and image pulsates in equilibrium on all levels.
By the collages, a fictional space is composed that functions like a stage.Here, the content of the poetry could take place. The images are not a representation of real space of istanbul, but furthermore they are a fictional story in itself, composed from hundreds of fragments of istanbul-photographs. The compository element relates to the structure of the turkish language – an agglutinative language. Here, most words are formed by joining morphemes together. (agglutinare (lat.) = to glue together)

Language: English