Istanbul 05 010

Gabriele Basilico’s Istanbul includes unpublished photographs shot in 2005 and to which he turned again in 2010. The precision of the camera lens shows images of a city – one of the most populated metropolitan areas in the world – expanding and thinning away to incorporate the surrounding hillsides. An ever-present mist, the steep outline of the horizon and the light that evaporates from the illuminated roads create a backdrop for the city’s architectural landscape: the anonymous verticality of new tower blocks and the overcrowded horizontal lines of never ending suburbs.

Characteristically of Gabriele Basilico’s photographs, the outward portrayal of the city reveals its inner nature: without explicit references to any human presence – or perhaps precisely because none is portrayed – these photos evoke the community that created, inhabited and gave meaning to these places. Showing only the urban product without its makers or inhabitants Basilico’s photos represent an independent way of discovering the city, part architectural document and part individual memory.

This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Gabriele Basilico. Istanbul 05 010 at the Fondazione Stelline, Milan in 2010 and includes a text by Luca Doninelli.