In every great city, there are places that quietly preserve memory. In Istanbul, one such place is the humble neighborhood photo studio. Long before smartphones and instant snapshots, these studios were small temples of ritual: the place where a child’s first school portrait was taken, where newlyweds posed before marriage, where families marked milestones and where an entire community assembled – one frame at a time – into history.
As urban life accelerated, this ritual faded. Photo studios turned into functional spaces for quick ID or visa photos. Yet some still endure as living archives of the city’s past. One of the most remarkable is FotoAS, in the Bağlarbaşı neighborhood of Üsküdar.
From the street, its storefront commands attention: rows of portraits, black and white, and early color alike, gaze back at passersby like actors in a play about Istanbul itself. When I photographed the display and shared it on social media, the response was extraordinary – more than a million views, shares and comments. It revealed a simple truth: beneath the city’s restless modernity lies a deep, almost aching nostalgia for neighborhood life.
The studio’s gallery tells an alternative history of Türkiye, one face at a time. Among them is Hulusi Kentmen, the fatherly figure of Turkish cinema; Barış Manço, rock musician and cultural icon and Yılmaz Köksal, remembered not only for his film roles but also as a Bağlarbaşı shopkeeper known for his warmth. The black-and-white years of the 1960s and ’70s feature theater giant Ferhan Şensoy and musician Fuat Güner of MFÖ. With the arrival of color came new generations: actress and singer Zuhal Olcay, footballer Metin Tekin and singer Şevval Sam, now a celebrated artist in her own right.
Television also left its mark, with personalities such as Ilker Ayrık and the late Vural Çelik, while younger visitors today are delighted to spot historian Emrah Safa Gürkan among the portraits. Perhaps the most striking image belongs to Ebru Gündeş, one of Türkiye’s most popular singers. Long before fame, she posed here for a wedding scene in a television drama. Standing beside her fictional groom, she froze a moment that was both staged and real. That portrait still adorns the studio’s window – a reminder that many of these figures were beginning their journeys, unaware of the roles, records and acclaim awaiting them.
Equally symbolic is Zehra Güneş, star of Türkiye’s women’s volleyball team and a native of Üsküdar. Her portrait reflects the nation’s shifting imagination: from cinema and song to the global arenas of sport. Alongside her stands Lütfi Arıboğan, basketball player and administrator, tying past and present together.
Bağlarbaşı’s resonance extends beyond its storefronts. In one of Emel Sayın’s famous songs, the refrain asks: “Kız, sen Istanbul’un neresindensin?” (“Girl, where in Istanbul are you from?”) The lyrics answer with a line that lingers in memory: “From the dusty road of Bağlarbaşı.” Once, Bağlarbaşı marked the very edge of the city. Beyond lay farms, open fields and countryside – a threshold where Istanbul ended and rural life began. Today, the same ground is crowded with apartments, cafes and constant traffic. Yet through music and memory, Bağlarbaşı still whispers of its past, a place both within and beyond the city, where nostalgia and modernity meet.
Why did this storefront image resonate so deeply? The answer lies not only in celebrity but in memory and belonging. Istanbul’s waves of redevelopment and gentrification have displaced countless families. Migration is not just rural-to-urban or international; it also occurs within the city, pushing people away from their familiar neighborhoods and rhythms.
For many, the neighborhood photo studio is a fragile bridge to those lost geographies. To recognize a face in the Bağlarbaşı window is to step back into a shared past – to recall a time when greatness lived next door, or when one’s own family portrait might have been taken there. That is why the viral reaction was less about fame and more about pride, longing and a collective act of remembering.
The streets around FotoAS reflect this layered history. Across the road lies the Bağlarbaşı Armenian Cemetery, a solemn marker of the city’s multiethnic past. Nearby, old tram depots are being transformed into cultural centers, such as Nevmekan, blending heritage with Istanbul’s thriving cafe culture. On the same street, baklava shops, kebab houses and tradespeople keep local life alive.
Yet it is the humble storefront of FotoAS that captures Istanbul’s heart. More than a collection of portraits, it is a visual archive of a city always in motion, yet forever bound by memory. As Istanbul reinvents itself – sometimes violently, beautifully – such places matter more than ever. They remind us that history is not only recorded in archives and textbooks, but also in the glass windows of neighborhood photographers who once said, “Smile.”
For a brief moment, when the shutter clicked, an ordinary day became part of something larger. And decades later, standing before that same photograph, we realize that memory is never only personal. It is shared, woven into the city’s fabric – a portrait of Istanbul itself.
