On Saturday, a memorial ceremony for Ara Güler was held at Galatasaray Square in Istanbul's European side. Later, Guler's coffin was taken to Üç Horan Ermeni Kilisesi (Yerrortutyun Armenian Church) in Beyoglu district and he was buried at the Armenian Cemetery in Sisli district after the ceremony in the church. He was buried with soil from his hometown, Şebinkarahisar and Karayemiş fruit was placed in his grave.
Mavi Boncuk | Cartoon by Ercan Akyol / Milliyet
I was born in Istanbul on August 16, 1928 at 4:30 p.m.,” Güler begins to tell his life story. His roots go back to Shabin-Karahisar (Şebinkarahisar in northeastern Turkey): his father, Dajad Derderian (born 1896) left the town for Istanbul at the age of six. Dajad was educated at the Tarkmanchats School in the city’s Ortaköy neighborhood and sang in the Kousan choir formed by Komitas. In 1934 a law was passed requiring citizens to Turkify their last names. Dajad Derderian became Dajad Güler. The latter means “roses” in Turkish.
Dajad settled in Constantinople. He learned pharmacology and opened his own drugstore.
Dajad and Verjin Güler at their wedding
Güler’s mother Verjin was born into the wealthy Egyptian-Armenian Shahian family. Verjin’s father owned a ship repair business in Constantinople. The family spent winters in Egypt and summers in Constantinople. It was there that Verjin met her future husband, and Ara was the couple’s only child. A maid called Aghavni took care of young Ara.
Ara Güler with his nanny Aghavni
“One day my father said: ‘My boy, you have traveled the entire world but have never visited our village.’ We decided to go to the village. We went all around. My father looked for the family house but never found it because it was demolished. We also went to the cemetery. They had demolished it too,” Güler remembers.
On their way back Dajad remembered something he had forgotten to revisit – the fruit [1] growing in the village. “We had traveled some 200 kilometers. If we went back, we’d have lost a day. That’s why I said, ‘We’ll go another time.’ We returned to Constantinople,” says the photographer.
But a few months later Dajad fell ill and died of a heart attack. A few hours before his funeral there was a knock on the door. The two men said they were looking for Dajad Güler. “I said: ‘He died and we’re going to the funeral. You come as well.’ They said they were from Shabin-Karahisar and that they had brought something for Dajad. It was fruit, what else? They had brought fruit from the village in a box. I put the fruit in some bags and we left for the cemetery. After the ceremony, I told the priest and he said to leave the fruit with the body. My father left this world with fruit from his village,” Güler recalls.
“The Eye of Istanbul”
Ara Güler attended the Mkhitarist School in Istanbul and continued his education at the Getronagan High School. While there he signed up for drama courses at the Muhsin Ertuğrul Theatrical Company. “My father was friends with all the theater and film people. I grew up in the theater. I wanted to become a scriptwriter. If I became one, I would have been one today. Instead, I became one of the world’s most influential journalists,” Güler says contentedly.
At the behest of his father, after high school Ara enrolled in Istanbul University to study economics. “My father had a large pharmacy employing 15. He wanted me to work there,” Ara remembers.
While at university Güler developed an interest in photography. In 1950 he started working for the Yeni Istanbul (New Istanbul) magazine. In 1958, when the influential Time-Life magazine opened a branch in Turkey, Güler became its first Near East correspondent. He also worked for Paris Match and Der Stern. In 1953, he joined the Paris Magnum photo agency. In 1961, the annual "British Anthology of Photographers" recognized Güler as one of the world’s top seven photographers. That same year he became a member of the American Society of Photographers.
Güler has traveled and worked on all continents. As a journalist, he photographed the Mindanao and Eritrea wars. He visited Armenia several times. “I was there also in the Soviet times. I have photographed all the churches In Armenia. It is very important,” he says.
Ara Güler’s work has been published in scores of prominent magazines and books and won multiple awards. His exhibitions have traveled the world over. Many of his books have seen several print runs. “If it weren’t for those photos, no one would recognize Istanbul. No one was photographing Istanbul except for the shots taken by one or two French and German soldiers during the occupation. But they weren’t of value,” he boasts. Now in his 90s, Güler is convinced that the real journalists are photojournalists. But he hasn’t opened a gallery because “a reporter has no time for such things.” SOURCE
AURORA VIDEO
Prunus laurocerasus, also known as cherry laurel, common laurel and sometimes English laurel in North America, is an evergreen species of cherry (Prunus), native to regions bordering the Black Sea in southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe, from Albania and Bulgaria east through Turkey to the Caucasus Mountains and northern Iran.
[*] Karayemiş ilk olarak 1546 yılında Fransız Pierre Belon (1517–1564) tarafından Trabzon'dan toplanmış ve Cerasus trapezentuna ( Trabzon Kirazı ) olarak adlandırılmıştır. Bitki aynı yıl, İstanbul üzerinden İtalya'ya; 1574'te de Clusius tarafından Viyana'ya getirilmiş, oradan da Fransa ve İngiltere'ye gönderilmiştir. Budanarak şekil verilebilmesi, dökülmeyen parlak koyu yeşil yaprakları ve kokulu beyaz çiçekleri ile taflan, 1600 yılından itibaren tüm Avrupa'da park ve bahçelerde yetiştirilmeye başlanmıştır. Günümüzde büyüme biçimi, yaprak boyut ve şekli, kışa dayanıklılık açısından farklı 20 kadar taflan kültürvarı vardır.
Pierre Belon (1517–1564) was a French traveler, naturalist, writer and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology, ornithology, botany, comparative anatomy, architecture and Egyptology.
Belon studied botany at the University of Wittenberg (1540) and, under the patronage of François, Cardinal de Tournon, embarked on a tour of eastern Mediterranean countries (1546–48) in order to identify animals, plants, places, and objects described by ancient writers. He hoped to find the remains of Homer's Troy in the Levant. In the resulting work, Les Observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses mémorables . . . (1553; “Observations of Several Curiosities and Memorable Objects . . .”), he described many animals, plants, drugs, customs, arts, and ruins previously unknown to Europeans and established an itinerary followed by scientific travelers for nearly three centuries afterward.
He is sometimes known as Pierre Belon du Mans, or, in the Latin in which his works appeared, as Petrus Bellonius Cenomanus. Ivan Pavlov called him the "prophet of comparative anatomy".
His discussion of dolphin embryos and systematic comparisons of the skeletons of birds and humans mark the beginnings of modern embryology and comparative anatomy. Although based on the taxonomy of Aristotle, Belon’s L’histoire naturelle des éstranges poissons marins (1551; “Natural History of Unusual Marine Fishes”), much of which is devoted to a discussion of the dolphin, and L’histoire de la nature des oyseaux (1555; “Natural History of Birds”), illustrating, classifying, and describing about 200 species, include original observations and concepts that made a deep impression on contemporary and later science.
Belon was murdered by unknown assailants in the Bois de Boulogne.
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