A Year in Moda, Istanbul through my Viewfinder
Just before we grow old, many, like Omar Khayyam, regret that "Alas, Spring should vanish with the Rose." Perhaps if we do not have a broken body and mind, as Marcel Proust said, "Desire makes everything blossom," and youth truly resides in our hearts.
In this case, aging does not merely increase the years of life; it is the feeling of moving away from the center of events, being driven to the sidelines of the text, and observing what is happening instead of actively participating in the course of events. It is a process that for some, like David Hockney, has not yet begun, and for others, such as Houshang Pezeshknia*, arrived sooner than expected.
Now, in the midst of my journey, I have the same feeling as the old men of Farah Park, who sat on a bench, staring at an unknown point while I, as a child, passed by them holding hands with my father. I sit under the shade of a sycamore tree, similar to the one in front of Kourosh's bookstore in Tehran, and gaze at people through my camera viewfinder, lost in reverie.
Memories, unlike our aging, do not progress in a straight line towards the end; they come and go, as if dying each time only to resurrect elsewhere, akin to the white void between these photos, in a sudden and ineffable twist. It's as if in our fragmented loneliness, whether we are immigrants from another land or exiled within our own home, I am seated by the Caspian Sea or the Strait of Hormuz, in a cafe on Naderi Street or on a bench on Karimkhan Street.
Passers-by resemble a father, a musician evokes a brother, a girl like a lover, and a couple embodies friends; they laugh and sing, frown and walk, and kiss and drink, as if all the sounds are in my mother tongue, all the smells are familiar. It's as if I know their happiness and griefs, hopes and fears, as if I am embedded in the context of their lives... as if it were other days when hopes outweigh frights.
* Houshang Pezeshknia one of the pioneers of Iranian modern art, was born in 1917. His artistic career was short-lived and his creativity was not widely remembered following his seclusion.
Amien Shahmoradi
