Hidden Istanbul

How can something that is concealed be represented, be shown? This is precisely what Françoise Caraco has tried to undertake in the current book ‘Hidden Istanbul’. On a quest to find her ancestors, Françoise Caraco travelled to Istanbul numerous times and talked to people who knew or had known a Caraco—or Karako—or at least remembered the name.

This afforded her a unique glimpse of the culture of the Sephardic Jews, who have inhabited the Turkish metropolis for centuries but remain unseen by most eyes. In ‘Hidden Istanbul’ Françoise Caraco sensitively weaves family memories with her own contemporary photographs of her journey and researches, intermingled with various voices from Istanbul’s Jewish community. The result is a rich and nuanced portrait of a vanishing past and a still-vibrant present of the city from the perspective of a largely unknown segment of its population.