Growing up in İstanbul we tried to emulate him. We bought a second hand Zenit range finder camera [1] and started to roam the streets of İstanbul like him. Later we made an enlarger from a cardboard tube. Needless to say, none of us made it to Magnum. It's just not enough to have a camera to take lasting pictures. Obviously he was a master.

[1] Zenit was a Russian version of legendary Leicas of the last century. You got a great camera but cheaper than a Leica.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenith_camera

[2] His website: http://www.araguler.com.tr/tr/

[3] Recently opened Ara Güler Museum in İstanbul. http://www.theguideistanbul.com/ara-guler-museum-turkish-pho...

Ara Güler is also famous for insisting he's neither an artist, nor a photographer, but a journalist. Translated below:

"I don't think photography is art. I'm a journalist, not a photographer. When a bomb explodes, a photographer runs away, but the journalist chases after it and tries to capture the story. That's the difference between a photographer and a journalist and it's how I have worked all my life."

He was renowned for sure, but he got a lot of hate for taking pictures of Erdoğan and generally not standing against him.

In today's political climate you cannot simply be an artist. You are apparently forced to pick allegiances or the public will announce yours for you.

I was on top of a mountain once, and a new person that I met there said "I hate your president" right after asking name & where I'm from. Same thing happened to me in a beach when I was borrowing fins from a German couple, and in North Italy when I got off in wrong bus stop and had to hitchhike. Turkish? Erdogan! What a time...

All of that hate and criticism was an idiotic logorrhoea fed by absolute ignorance of his art. Like him or not, Erdogan is a major phenomenon in contemporary Turkey, and every single person is affected by him; a photojournalist can't do nothing but study and document this phenomenon. Hating Guler for that is like hating HIV researchers because the virus has caused lots of harm, or historians or sociologists &c for studying Hitler.

I agree with this. Even though we hate Erdogan, it's clearly the most important thing happened to Turkey since it's foundation.

Disclaimer: I was raised in Turkey and ran away from Erdogan's regime 5 years ago. Currently living in Boston, MA.

>>In today's political climate you cannot simply be an artist.

There is no such thing as "simply an artist". Art is a form of self-expression. An artist's work therefore speaks volumes about who they are and how they view the world.

This is also not something that is unique to today. History is full of artists who chose to stand up to tyranny, and lost everything because of it.

Artist != interior decorator.