Something is missing. What happens if you leave out people, animals, and language while telling a story about a city? Notion of a City is a beautifully peculiar portrayal of Istanbul.
We have imagined a city, built it. Is this it though, or just an idea of it? We walked these streets, learned our way back home; it was easy to get lost but we knew that wall with the graffiti on it, we turned left and then right (many times), and it was there. Stripped of all the clues that tell someone where a place might be, the book portrays a city with no one and no language in it. There are, however, some signs of life: foliage and, of course, construction sites. Some other questions you will ask yourself: Where is this? What city is this? Is this even a city?
An attentive eye roams an untamed space; familiar scenes and objects with no context, they all come together to trick you, make you forget the way back home. It’s Istanbul, as a notion of a city that lives in our minds. That’s about it.
