Foto Galata­saray
Public Tagging Days

Wanted: individuals who photographed at Foto Galatasaray!
SALT Galata, Auditorium

As part of the Foto Galatasaray exhibition, SALT will organize an event on January 13-14 that will introduce an innovative approach to the concept of “archive.” Public Tagging Days, to be held at the Auditorium of SALT Galata, will constitute the first step in identifying the individuals who had their photographs taken between 1935 and 1985 at Foto Galatasaray, a modest studio in Beyoğlu, Galatasaray belonging to Maryam Şahinyan, one of the first women studio photographers in İstanbul.

Everyone who might have left a trace in the Foto Galatasaray archive and all those interested are kindly invited to this event where you may find your family members, friends, and familiar faces, and have the opportunity to make a contribution to keep alive this unique archive, which has made a reading of the recent history possible.

Approximately 200,000 negatives in the archive were, over the course of two years, sorted, cleaned, digitized, digitally restored, categorized and protected by a team under the direction of artist/researcher Tayfun Serttaş. The archive, consists of the photographs of around one million people, will be open to online public participation in 2012, when the people photographed at Foto Galatasaray may be identified.

The Foto Galatasaray, on view in the Open Archive at SALT Galata until January 22, 2012, is based on the re-visualization of the complete professional archive of Maryam Şahinyan (Sivas, 1911 – İstanbul, 1996). Consisting entirely of black-and-white and glass negatives, the physical archive of Foto Galatasaray is a rare surviving example of the classical photography studios of İstanbul’s recent past. The archive is a unique inventory of the demographic transformations occurring on the socio-cultural map of İstanbul after the declaration of the Republic and the historical period it witnessed; it is also a chronological record of a female İstanbulite studio photographer’s professional career.

TAGGING SCHEDULE:

January 13, 2012

10.00-13.00 Between the years 1935 and 1949 (Part 1)
13.00-14.00 -Break-
14.00-15.00 Between the years 1935 and 1949 (Part 2)
15.00-20.00 Between the years 1950 and 1959

January 14, 2012

10.00-13.00 Between the years 1960 and 1969
13.00-14.00 -Break-
14.00-17.00 Between the years 1970 and 1979
17.00-20.00 Between the years 1980 and 1985