Constantinople Through the Lens of Achille Samandji and Eugene Dalleggio

A photographer of the Sultan's court, Achilles Samandji, and a historian, a talented amateur photographer in his spare time, Eugène Dalleggio, both Greeks of Constantinople, proffer the reader of this book a penetrating, sensitive and exceptionally multi-faceted picture of the city during the years 1898 to 1935. Both men, albeit devotees and servants of the city's Byzantine and Romaic myth, worship Constantinople as the mother of all its various peoples rather than as a symbol of nationalism. For this reason they were able to capture the whole mosaic of the city's myriad facets with the camera lens, with an almost unique freedom and completeness, at the very moment when its historical, elaborate face was being shattered by history. Deeper than Samandji's love for his homeland, and underlying the heartache and nostalgia felt by Dalleggio, who was from the new generation, their photographic opus reveals a great human truth. It is a truth that is strangely not redeeming, but at least it is hopeful for all those who realize the humanitarian insufficiency and acknowledge the void that the violent realignments and fanaticisms of the twentieth century caused, and not just to the historic physiognomy of Constantinople