0
An exhibition featuring the postcard collection of Orlando Carlo Calumeno has been exhibited in several cities across Europe over the last few years (Photo: Today's Zaman, Mehmet Ali Poyraz)
16 May 2013 /ALISON KENNY, ANTALYA
“How much?” was my response to the grumpy woman behind the post office desk when she eventually turned her attention away from her mobile phone to serve me. She was asking for nearly TL 10 to stamp and post four postcards. Postage prices had rocketed since I last sent postcards back to the UK and I was taken aback by the steep price, especially as I knew from past experience that these cards seldom arrive until well after the writers have themselves returned to their homes.
Postcard views
My most recent visitors had returned from their stroll around the Kaleiçi (Antalya's old town) clutching the latest batch of postcards, with the customary determination to both write and post these before they returned to the UK. Glancing over at their selection I could see a couple of sun-soaked views across the bay, a beach or two complete with bronzed, bikini-clad holidaymakers, one showing some tourists enjoying a spot of white water rafting, a few of the scattered Roman-era remains of Side, one with some hang gliders in mid-air, a token picture of Antalya's clock tower and, of course, a shot of Antalya at night lit up by millions of hotel lights.These postcards are representative of Antalya as it is now for the average tourist, but they are in stark contrast to a collection of postcards I recently saw on my last visit to İstanbul. Here, in the great cultural metropolis of İstanbul, where in between eating out, watching a Beşiktaş football match live and wandering the back streets in search of lesser-known mosques and churches, I was able to visit several art exhibitions.
Images of the past
The most intriguing on my latest trip up north was an exhibition at a relatively new addition to the booming Beyoğlu gallery world, Depo, in Tophane (http://www.depoistanbul.net). The gallery is housed in a quirky building that was once a tobacco warehouse and can be found nestled halfway between bustling İstiklal Street and the beautiful Ottoman Kılıç Ali Paşa Complex, overlooking the waters of the Bosporus. Exhibitions held here usually deal with social and political issues and often, as in this case, focus on minority groups. Here, I was able to view an exhibition titled “A Hundred Years of Armenians in Turkey,” an amazing collection of postcards dating back to the period before the outbreak of World War I that gives a fascinating insight into a virtually vanished community. The difference between these images and the glossy views of Antalya is startling.The exhibition, like all those at this venue, is free as it was funded by the non-profit organization Anadolu Kültür. The postcards are part of a collection of Orlando Carlo Calumeno and have been exhibited in several cities across Europe over the last few years. The exhibition was put together by Osman Köker, a journalist and historian with a particular interest in minorities. They fill the large expanses of the walls of two floors of this spacious building and are beautifully displayed. The descriptions are written in Turkish, English and Armenian and explain to viewers where the postcards originate from, what they depict and occasionally a copy of the words written by the sender.
Illusion versus reality
If the postcards from Antalya were to be used in a similar exhibition 100 years from now, blown up and annotated, they would give an illusionary impression of the city as it is in 2013, all sun-kissed beaches, pretty Ottoman houses in the old, walled city and views across the bay to the spectacular Lycian mountains at sunset. You'll search in vain on the postcard racks for images of the city as it really is -- the thousands of concrete tower blocks marching in every direction, car mechanics stripping down Renault Kangoos in the industrial estate, traffic clogging up the underpasses, bins overflowing with litter on the backstreets off the main shopping drag and sun-burned Roma wheeling huge carts full of tin cans and plastic water bottles to sell as recyclable materials.By contrast, the exhibition of black and white postcards from pre-World War I Turkey I saw at Depo appears to show the country as it really was. There are postcards on display of factories and their workers, government buildings, schools and their pupils, stern owners outside their hardware shops, worshippers lining up outside churches and artisans at work in the bazaars. There are even photographs of orphanages. Together they give an intimate portrait of a multicultural society living together throughout Turkey as the images on the cards (actually the original cards blown-up to poster size) were captured in over 20 cities -- including İzmir (Smyrna), İstanbul, Kars, Erzurum, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Van, Trabzon and one, hidden in a corner, from Antalya.
Tourists are money
As I viewed the exhibition, I wondered why the photographers of a hundred or so years ago, and presumably the people who bought, wrote and sent the postcards produced from the images they captured so brilliantly using the unwieldy equipment of the period, were so interested in the mundane scenes of everyday life. What a contrast to the postcards on sale in Antalya today, dominated as they are by scenes of happy people relaxing on beaches, wandering blissfully around the pretty old city, admiring sunset views or enjoying a drink and meal in an upscale restaurant. Would anyone today buy an Antalya postcard depicting mournful looking children gazing from the window of the state orphanage, factory workers streaming out after a hard day's labor at the chrome factory on the outskirts of the city or the big red KL08 bus negotiating a bend on Atatürk Caddesi?Antalya's raison d'etre is tourism -- over 8 million visitors a year arrive at the city's international airport. Without tourism, the city would shrink back from the million plus population it boasts today towards the 30,000 or so who lived here in the 1950s. “Tourists are money,” sneered punk-rock legends the Sex Pistols in 1977's “God Save the Queen” and the vast majority of the tourists who today swell the Turkish state coffers want a sanitized version of the country they are visiting, with all the “warts” removed and only the picturesque on view. The postcard manufacturers are only too happy to oblige their customers, so the next time you're in town, don't bother trying to find a postcard of the abandoned cotton factory or the traffic jams on the airport road.
Postcards, it seems, used to provide an invaluable insight into the social history of the period and provide honest, visual evidence of our past. These visions of Armenians living and working alongside Turks throughout the country I viewed at Depo are a prime example. Quite what impression the postcards I have just posted from Antalya will provide 100 years from now I dread to think -- but it certainly won't be a truthful one.