ICFA.NA.0195, Nicholas V. Artamonoff Collection, Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, Dumbarton Oaks.

Kariye Camii (Monastery of Christ at the Chora), west end of the South façade, March 1937.

Adil Murat Kansız’ parents lived in the house behind Kariye Camii when they immigrated to Istanbul from Rize in 1934. Let us hear the story of this photograph from Kansız: “One day, I found the Artamonoff exhibition online and looked at the images carefully. I showed them to my aunt. She remembered the house and cried. She was born in that house in 1937. And one day in May 1937 a photographer, Nicholas Artamonoff, visited the Kariye Camii. He took a few pictures of the mosque. On one of these images we can see my grandfather’s first house, which does not exist today. In one of them he also caught my father’s aunt. She was peeking her head around the side of her house.”