A Road Story: 180 Years of Photography celebrates the 180th anniversary of the invention of photography at the Pera Museum, Istanbul. The exhibition brings together interpretations of renowned contemporary photographers who follow the same route as the first photography trip that took place in 1839, each with a different perspective and technique.
Following the invention of photography in 1839, French painters Émile Jean Horace Vernet, Charles Marie Bouton, and daguerreotypist Frédéric Auguste Antoine Goupil-Fesquet have departed on a ship from the Port of Marseille in October the same year to take photographs with a Daguerrotype camera. They returned to Marseille six months later, in April 1840 passing from many ports in the eastern Mediterranean: Livorno, Malta, Syros, Paros, Naxos, Santorini, Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, Suez, Mount Sinai, Gaza, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nablus, Sayda, Deir Al Qamar, Damascus, Tripoli, Baalbek, Beirut, Larnaca, Rhodes, Kos, Izmir, Dardanelles, Istanbul and Rome. Goupil-Fesquet later conveyed his impressions about this journey in his book, Voyage d’Horace Vernet en Orient published in 1843.
At the 180th anniversary of this first known photography trip, the exhibition A Road Story: 180 Years of Photography curated by Engin Özendes features the artists Ali Borovalı, Coşkun Aral, Murat Germen, Yusuf Sevinçli, Laleper Aytek, Alp Sime, Lale Tara, Serkan Taycan, Cem Turgay and Sinan Koçaslan. The photographs they took during their trips to the stops of the earlier journey reflect a contemporary take on these cities with rich histories.
Pera Museum Istanbul
