On the occasion of Easter

In celebration of the Greek Orthodox Easter, which falls late this year on May 2nd, one week after that spectacular full moon, I would like to share some lesser known locations from the Istanbul community. Above photo by Paris Petridis.

In the most unexpected neighborhood of Fatih in Carsamba there is this lovely neglected church with stunning icons and a garden of fruit trees, Aya Yorgi Potiras, built in 1760.

We almost lost it's caretaker Musa to Covid but he is back and usually opens the doors when you ring. It makes for a great day out, the church is right above Balat. Murat Molla Sok.39 Çarşamba, Fatih

The following photos and text are taken from the Agra (Athens) publication, The Rum Orthodox Schools of Istanbul by the photographer Paris Petridis. They are in his still and mystical style, photographed on a 8x10 view camera.

Petridis has exhibited widely and is a lecturer at the University of West Attica.

Typing Classroom, Zographeion Lycee, 2007

'When I first laid eyes on Istanbul’s working Greek schools in July 2006, words failed me. Built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by a then flourishing Greek Orthodox diaspora, with moving dignity they defend the community’s bourgeois cosmopolitanism against the starkness of reality.'

Great hall, Great School of the Nation, 2006

'Over the year that followed, I would return again and again to their austere magnificence only to find myself swept up each time in a maelstrom of ambivalence: the alienation of the empty spaces and the largesse of their architecture, the atmosphere of stateliness and the absence that does not detract from it, the objects’ perishability and their persistent claims to utility value, decimated numbers and continuity in the education conveyed, a sense of loss and the reassuring certainty that home is where meaning has not leaked away.'

Archive, Zographeion Lycee, 2007

Classroom, Great School of the Nation, 2006

'this mute record is an audible echo of memory, a glimpse of the lines on our palms.' Paris Petridis

Petridis can be reached through his website, www.parispetridis.com