East Village photographer Q. Sakamaki was recently in the Middle East documenting Turkey’s changing social climate. As Sakamaki sees it, Turkey is becoming increasingly “conservative on the outside, but still liberal on the inside.” By contrast, he noted, “L.A. is outside liberal, inside conservative.”
This page and opposite, clockwise from above: In Istanbul, at a mosque on Regaib Kandili, which marks the day of the Prophet Muhammad’s conception; in Urfa in central Turkey, a girl skips through Byzantine ruins; in Istanbul, a vendor sells flags of Ataturk, still universally revered as the father of modern Turkey, in front of a mosque, while a conservatively dressed woman passes, at right; a pair of Sufi dancers meditate before a performance.
thevillager.com
