The current price of the folio is $250 per set and will increase to $300 after the copy number 6, to $400 after copy number 10. There may be additional increases after that and the total number of folios of this collection will be limited to 18 copies with no more than 3 artist proofs.

Available copies are:

Please contact me using the form on the “Contact” page if you have questions or are interested in acquiring a copy for your collection or for gift giving. If you live nearby, I will be glad to show you the actual folio.

Here are the photographs in the folio collection

In singing traditional Turkish music, the singer’s head, especially that of the amateurs, moves in predictable manner; down for low notes, up for high, occasionally moving side to side much more rapidly than the rhythm would indicate. The length of time of down or up state depends on the length of the note. Clapping occasionally enters the scene keeping rhythm with the drummer (at least some of the time.) The group certainly enjoyed themselves and I was interested in capturing the gesture, the movement of the music with my camera. They knew I was taking photographs but mostly ignored me, thank you guys. I did not know who they were, I will not meet them again in all likelihood. I hope they accidentally find their way to this page and remember the good time they had.

As we walked down the hill, I saw one of the many fountains in the city. This was mostly spraying mist, creating a little comfort zone for those who want to pause to rest. I wanted to capture the water in different states, in frozen time with droplets visible and in slow motion where moving water becomes like cotton candy. This is normally a reasonably simple thing to do by using a fast or slow shutter speed. The first was easy, the second proved more challenging as I did not have my tripod with me. The slow shutter speed photographs are taken with camera hand-held at 1/2 to 1/8 of a second. I could still hold the camera steady at those speeds.

Then we passed a statue and a small area dedicated to Cemal Nadir Guler, a cartoonist of my childhood who entered the psyche of the population with a character Amcabey. Through his cartoon art, he commented on various aspects of life in his time. I did not know that he died at the age of 45.

Then, there was a man in white, I mean from head to toe white. He stood there with occasional smile on his face, with total incongruity with the crowd surrounding the puppeteer; his sole purpose seemed to be to provide a strong contrast to the puppeteer in black. Seeing the puppeteer, the man in white, and a young man who appeared to be the apprentice of the showman, was at times a surreal experience. Who were these men, why did the man in white stood there, why did the apprentice appear to be disinterested in what was going on yet in full costume like his master? I took some photographs, albeit only a dozen or so under rather low light conditions. We continued to visit Narmali Han, where I took some photographs of the cats. Then on our way back, the puppeteer was now wearing an oversize mask, fitting to the occasion, rather grotesque. This time he and his alter ego coincided more.

I took a few more photographs but we had to move on. Still, I believe the few photographs I have convey the surrealistic experience quite strongly, at least to me. Here are the characters of this late afternoon show.

This gallery is a small selection of photographs which show the close relation between the people and the plants, mostly flowering. Cats, well, that’s for another post.