Alex Webb: Istanbul (Hardcover)

In "Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names," Magnum photographer Alex Webb displays his particular ability to distill gesture, color and contrasting cultural tensions into a single, beguiling frame. He presents a vision of Istanbul as an urban cultural center, rich with the incandescence of its past--a city of minarets and pigeons rising to the heavens during the early-morning call to Muslim prayers--yet also a city riddled with ATM machines and clothed in designer jeans. Webb began photographing Istanbul in 1998, and became instantly enthralled: by the people, the layers of culture and history, the richness of street life. But what particularly drew him in was a sense of Istanbul as a border city, lying between Europe and Asia. "For 30-some years as a photographer, I have been intrigued by borders, places where cultures come together, sometimes easily, sometimes roughly." The resulting body of work, some of Webb's strongest to date, conveys the frisson of a culture in transition, yet firmly rooted in a complex history. With essay by the Nobel Prize winning novelist, Orhan Pamuk.

Alex Webb is best known for his vibrant and complex color photography, often made in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has published eleven books, including Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba (with Rebecca Norris Webb) and The Suffering of Light, a collection of thirty years of his color work. Alex became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1979. His work has been shown widely, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. He's received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO, among other publications. Orhan Pamuk is the author of such novels as "The New Life," "The Black Book," "My Name Is Red" and "The White Castle." He has won numerous international awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. He lives with his wife and daughter in Istanbul.