Meşher’s new exhibition Istanbul as Far as the Eye Can See: Views across Five Centuries is curated by Şeyda Çetin and Ebru Esra Satıcı. Based on a selection of more than 100 rare works from the Ömer Koç Collection, the exhibition spans 500 years, from the 15th century – when Istanbul became Ottoman Empire’s capital – to the first quarter of the 20th century. Paintings and engravings showing wide-angle views, together with rare books, albums, panoramic photographs, and even souvenirs of Istanbul, offer visitors a richly varied visual record of the city. 
The many producers of these works are also very diverse, including a ship captain, travellers, soldiers, ambassadors, writers, photographers, architects, and city planners; many of them are Westerners with agendas ranging from political to military to aesthetic, and the medium they used varied. Their work reveals both diplomatic relations and the city’s multi-cultural structure and social life; they also trace the major changes that have taken place in the city over time. Quotations from written sources accompany the visual representations, creating a dialogue between Western perspectives and 19th- and early 20th-century Ottoman/Turkish literature. Rather than being yet another ode to the city, the exhibition encourages reflection on the diversity of its narratives and the differences in its many depictions.  

Istanbul as seen through Western eyes
Henry Aston Barker’s panorama of Istanbul, which he made from the top of the Galata Tower in 1800; an engraving after Philipp Franz von Gudenus’s drawing from the roof of the Swedish Embassy in 1741, sketched when he was stationed in Istanbul; and Joseph Schranz’s panorama from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara: these are only some of the images now showcased at Meşher. The works of James Robertson, known to have taken the earliest 360-degree panoramic photographs of Istanbul, are also on display, including his panorama taken from the Bayezid Tower in May 1854 and presented in an album that bears the artist’s signature. The oldest work in the exhibition is the Liber chronicarum (1493) by Hartmann Schedel, and among the most recent is an album (1922–1924) of original designs and drawings by Alexandre V. Pankoff. The panoramic views that enable us to see Istanbul from end to end and top to bottom in Istanbul as Far as the Eye Can See contain many interesting details as well. Shopkeepers in local dress, women making excursions in ox-drawn carriages, Europeans distinguishable by their hats, children, and four-legged friends of the city complete Istanbul’s historical silhouette.