I'm surrounded by cats. I'm renting a room in the apartment of a friend of a friend of a friend on a side street tucked away from traffic and noise in Beşiktaş. There are six total, mostly very fluffy with deformities of some sort: one eye, a stumpy tail with what looks like a big tumor on it, etc. Three of them have found perches on my luggage. Hakan, the new roommate, is an un-, erm, self-employed photographer and screenwriter who sitting with his actor girlfriend on the balcony drinking tea spent the past hour showing me mostly dirty photos of various ex's from his portfolio. I like him and he's playing along with my Turkish-speaking-only rule.
A new Trump Towers Shopping Mall has opened since last I was in Istanbul. I'm here this time to continue working on a little photo essay about a neighborhood renewal project and its discontents (see also http://www.tarlabasiistanbul.com/ -- this anthro student and a photographer I met at a workshop 2 years ago have been doing an interesting long term project on it). Also to relax and get some sun, though tomorrow's forecast is for thunder.
I did the first bit--the "before"--2 years ago when the renewal was just about to begin in earnest and no buildings had yet been razed or residents kicked out through the exercise of eminent domain. All that is going on now, so this will be the "during" bit. And presumably I'll come back for an "after" at some point too. Here are a few photos from 2 years ago, which I use recently decided might be interesting as a series of diptychs (click on an image for slideshow view):
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