Byzantium was everywhere in the old city: turning a corner, encircling the living space, marking the natural landscape, delimiting a garden, looming over a cemetery, chanelling the movement of people, separating land from the sea, lying under children’s feet. Artamonoff captured Byzantine remains from the vantage point of people who interacted with them on a day-to-day basis. The documentary value of his photographs for the study of Byzantine Istanbul is ever increasing given the rapid deterioration, unscientific restoration, and agressive destruction of its cultural heritage.
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.