In 1998 I photographed Turkey from the west's Bozcaada and Istanbul to the southeast’s ancient Harran, sacred Sanliurfa, and Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Kurdistan. The Turkish government had banned the Kurds’ music and language and curtailed their civil rights, and the Kurds, then as now, were often labeled terrorists. In my pictures here, and in my photo essay published in George, I hoped to counter this image and to capture instead the lyricism of their lives of their culture.

Harran, 1998 (1–3). Istanbul, 1998 (4). Sanliurfa, 1998 (5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12). Diyarbakir, 1998 (6, 11, 13). Bozcaada (14, 15).