Artamonoff was an ardent photographer with an intense intellectual curiosity about Byzantine Istanbul. He entered the nooks and crannies of the Land Walls, climbed minarets to capture rarely seen panoramas, documented the dark interiors of cisterns, out of sight, paid attention to sculptural decoration hidden in obscure substructures.
Based on the exhibit Artamonoff: Picturing Byzantine Istanbul, 1930–1947, organized by the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civlizations (RCAC) in conjunction with the Third International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium. © 2013-2014, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC, Trustees for Harvard University, all rights reserved.