Ilker Maga

“Istanbul smells like no other city I know. Wherever you go you can smell the sea ... and the fish. People in Istanbul love fish. And they also love cats; Istanbul is home to an empire of cats. And there‘s no other city in the world where people and seagulls are quite so interconnected. It’s an enchanted city, full of surprises – like a fairytale,” says Ilker Maga, bubbling over with enthusiasm. Now here’s a man who’s found his passion in life. His heart resonates to the beat of Istanbul. Several times a year he travels there to find himself amid a nation which – for more than just economic reasons – is coaxing its capital to open up to the west. Countless newspapers and publishers have long set up offices here. “Istanbul is the only city for me,” says Maga, who loves alternating between countries and some years will spend more time in Istanbul than in his home town of Bremen in northern Germany.

Maga was born in 1965 in Adana, southern Turkey, where his father ran a wholesale grain trading business. He and his sister were raised in a liberal-minded, knowledge-hungry family in which world literature was part of the daily diet. And so Maga started writing and photographing at a young age. Ironically, it was a documentary about child labour that earned him his first wages at 17. Since then, he and his camera are inseparable. “The camera is an extension of my body,” he says. His Leica R6 comes equipped with two lenses, a Macro-Elmarit-R 60 mm f/2.8 and a Macro-Elmarit-R 24 mm f/2.8. He uses an adapter to mount his other camera – Leica M6 – with a Summarit-M 35 mm f/2.5. Both are run on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 ASA – a classic film in journalistic photography.