I only met Josephine Powell a couple of times, when I first moved to Istanbul, but her name was often heard in expat circles. I enjoyed the few things we had in common in spite of the age gap. We were both Manhattanites, from different sides of ‘The Park’, we both left at the same age, 27, for Italy and then for Istanbul, and we both have photography as a trade though we use it in different ways. We were both wanderers, but my work took me to Yemen and hers to Anatolia and the East.
I remember her flat in Cihangir; its high ceilings were reminiscent of upper west side apartments, filled with books. the magnificent Bosphorus view was exciting. She was courteous but rarely smiled.
Josephine Powell was born on May 15, 1919 in New York and died in Istanbul in 2007. Andrew Finkel, a good friend of hers, wrote an eloquent tribute in Cornucopia's issue 30, starting with, ‘It is a line from her life, not a poem by Edward Lear: Josephine Powell once rode a chestnut mare to the magnificent Minaret of Jam. I have never met anyone else who has made that journey, but then few details of Josephine Powell's life have been less than extraordinary’ Later on he explains, ‘And she rode back from Jam, the famous Selçuk monument in western Afghanistan in 1960 with Sila, her Belgian sheepdog, tucked in a saddlebag.’
Josephine Powell was a collector, a photographer, an expert on Anatolian handcrafts and natural dyes and a great supporter of the women behind the crafts. She helped establish the Dobag Project, ‘the first Turkish women's co-operative which makes carpets using authentic designs and natural dyes’.
Kimberly Hart describes Josephine in the exhibition catalogue What Josephine Saw as ‘an intensely private, physically fragile person, she embarked on adventures, which few would dare to undertake. In these travels, she recorded what she saw with her camera, and for this Josephine was famous. Her living room, with a view of the Bosphorus and the peninsula of the old city, was a salon of sorts. Textile collectors, scholars, and friends came to the city, either as a destination, or a point in between other places’.
Paolo Girardelli, director of the History faculty at Bosphorus University remembers his first visit, ‘When I first met Josephine in the summer 1988, she was painting bricks white to become bookshelves for her home in Cihangir. I had just finished my master thesis and come back to Istanbul from my second trip hitching through eastern Anatolia. A friend from Rome had given me her phone number. My first encounter with Josephine was a unforgettable. Casually I asked about an Italian architect who had worked in Istanbul around the turn of the century, Raimondo D’Aronco. Before I knew it, in her cool and informal way, she had finished spraying the last brick and called Reha Günay, a scholar and expert on Mimar Sinan, who in turn put me in touch with Afife Batur, the most knowledgeable scholar on D’Aronco ( who sadly left us last year). These contacts were to change my life forever.’
Another old friend, Linda Robinson, tells of her first and last encounter with Josephine, ‘I met Josephine because a friend of ours, Diane Mott, was on her way to visit her and I tagged along. This was in the mid-80s; she was living in Şişli, in the ground floor apartment that was very dreary and Incredibly crammed full of objects, photos, books. After having a cup of tea with her and sitting there rather dazzled we left. I thought about it afterwards and went back days later, knocked on the door and said I've come to help and she said fine go put the tea on. I worked with her there for several years and then she was able to move to a bright sunny beautiful apartment with a view in Cihangir, when she moved there I said well it's been nice knowing you but I will never visit you because I didn't know that neighborhood and wasn't interested in going down there. I lived in Levent at the time. Years passed and I ended up living upstairs where I still am 27 years later. Okay that's the first day I met her now here's the last day. It was my habit to check on her in the mornings before I went out and in the evenings when I got home, that day she was going to the doctor because she hadn't been feeling very well. She called me midday which she never did to report that the doctor had said she was fine and then she paused and she said "thank you for being interested."That particular evening I was very busy and didn't check on her in the morning when I went down she was dead. She was laying across her desk with a pencil in her hand and a sketch of the migration path her favorite nomadic tribe.’
Finkel in the Cornucopia article elaborates, ‘She understands the ritual of the caravan – with the oldest unmarried daughter leading the way, the kilims which covered the cauldrons on the camel's back perceived from a distance as the colourful standards of a benign army on the march. She emphasizes with a way of life in which the women had the time to produce woven works of art. In so many ways she feels it was more sophisticated, and certainly more hygienic, than contemporary urban life. To put it less kindly, she is a relic of another century, the last of the great occidental travellers collecting the relics of a disappearing sort of life.’
In an interview with Andrew Finkel a few years before her passing she was asked how she started travelling. She had just finished photographing mosaics in the Grand Palace in Istanbul for the Byzantinist David Talbot Rice and while waiting for the film to be developed (it took two weeks in those days), ‘I thought that in this miserable Land Rover that I bought that I would at least go across to Asia on the ferry. I put my dog and my luggage in the car. We went across, and getting off the ferryboat and the sweep of all the taxis that were surrounding me and pushing me and honking at me, I kept going for a long time, and then I just sort of rolled on.’