Murat Harmanlikli

To walk a city is to read it like a text, and light is the language of that text. The city speaks to its inhabitants through the light that reveals its streets, its faces, its rhythms. Light does not simply show—it gives meaning to what is seen; it does not tell us what to look at, but how to see. Yet in the shadows, the city falls silent. It hides the untold stories, the fleeting glances, the dreams left unspoken; sound gives way to sensation. To walk through Istanbul is like reading The Thousand and One Nights. Light tells the stories of the city’s colors, its vibrancy, its urgency, its chaos. Shadow, on the other hand, evokes a déjà vu of the past with every step—a deep loneliness in the midst of crowds, the tension of being caught between East and West, the lingering sorrow of victories turned into quiet defeats. Light and shadow together tell never-ending stories that unfold in layers, like a matryoshka doll—each layer holding a new secret, each secret whispering a different voice. Istanbul speaks both openly and in silence—it dazzles, and it conceals. And I walk quietly through the pages of this book, camera in hand. In each frame, I search for a sentence; in each face, a word.I do not intervene—I only witness. The city tells its stories; I simply read them. With my eyes, with light, with time. Just as Italo Calvino wrote: “Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse.”