Istanbul - Konstantinopel. Fotograf G. Berggren

The Swedish photographer Guillaume Berggren arrived in Constantinople in 1866 and stayed there till he died in 1920. Berggren photographed the city’s architecture, environments and inhabitants. Berggren’s life coincided with the early infancy of photography and the faltering last decades of the Osman Empire. The focus of his attention is on Constantinople – a melting pot of cultures and an emergent modern city where East meets West. This exhibition shows how a Swedish photographer witnessed and recorded the transformation of the city, the hiatus between the traditional society and the onslaught of modernism, but also the westerners’ romanticised view of Osman Turkey and what we now call “orientalism”. His photographs today are of huge value to us as a contemporary record of a city in transition.

This exhibition, produced in association with the Swedish Consulate General in Istanbul, helps to focus attention on Istanbul as the 2010 European Capital of Culture.
Palais de Suède
Conjointly with the exhibition, we offer a presentation of Sweden’s Consulate General in Istanbul – the oldest building of the Swedish foreign service – and the earthquakeresistant reinforcement carried out in the palace by the Swedish National Property Board in 2009 and 2010. (www.medelhavsmuseet, 2010-04-26)