6-7 September 1955 Events Through the Objective of the Patriarchate Fotographer Dimitrios Kalumenos Volume 2

Last year, on the 60th anniversary of September 6/7, we presented VOLUME I with 60 photographs that came to light for the first time from Dimitrios Kalumenos’s archive and turned the camera to attacks on places of worship, cemeteries and religious institutions. In the VOLUME II of the series, we invite you to look at neighborhoods, houses, interiors and people with 61 photographs published for the first time in Turkey. In addition to the chronology and testimonies written by Dimitrios Kalumenos himself, the striking quotes of the journalist Serdar Korucu and the testimonies that we will read for the first time in Turkish, this photo album establishes a reminder to prevent similar sufferings.

The ominous story of this photo album begins with an office phone ring and the following unexpected news at the Old Customs Street in Galata on September 6, 1955. Patriarchate Photographer and journalist Dimitrios Kalumenos grabs his camera and runs out into the street, and the hardest and most painful documenting activity of his life, which he would continue for two days, even though he was out of breath, begins. In the midst of the destruction of September 6/7, 1955, looting, violence, rape, and burning, a man in a long trench coat is witnessing the demolition of the world he knew, of centuries-old houses of worship, cemeteries, monasteries, a people, and an ancient culture. A scared witness, a confused witness, an angry witness… 1500 frames of photographs taken by Kalumenos in two days are stuck in the minds with a devastating coldness, a wild aesthetic, and a scream that crosses over the years…