TITLE: Two Sides of The City

I shot this series in the same neighborhood of Istanbul over the course of years, hoping to be able to capture the daily lives of its underprivileged inhabitants, however progressively witnessing the change in the texture of the streets at the same time.

Therefore, the body of work I present here manifests a conflict within itself. On one hand the selfishness of the photographer, that would be myself, complaining about the vulgar face of the capitalism which presents itself as uncontrollable urbanization and fear of loosing that unique city texture which is very attractive as a shooting subject, and on the other hand observing the poor living conditions of these very people and granting the fact that they should be entitled to a better level of living standard even if it means newly erected tasteless building blocks.

Of course one can always wish for the best of both worlds.. though hopelessly..

AUTHOR: Erhan Coral (Turkey)

I am a self-taught street photographer out of Istanbul who's been shooting for years. It was started years ago with a very basic analogue camera as a mere hobby, but has eventually turned into a passion. I mainly shoot in B&W, love to be on the streets and love to catch people in their sincerest moments.

Having been born and raised in Istanbul gave me the opportunity to pursue my photography with more fervour, providing a culturally mixed and vibrant environment and being an avid traveller gave me the additional chance to be able to shoot different cities, different cultures and different people at the same time; as Graciela Iturbide once said "In the end, photography for me is just an excuse to get to know the world."

I was deeply inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Vivian Meier, Josef Koudelka, Martin Munkacsi, Fan Ho, Saul Leiter, Elliott Erwitt, Peter Lindberg, Mary Ellen Mark, Ara Güler, Sebastiao Salgado and on and on and on….