A trip through Mesopotamia
Traveling through the ancients wonders of Eastern Turkey on Assignment for Vanity Fair
I’m posting this work here because I didn’t get round to putting up the wider edit at the time. This was an assignment I undertook for Vanity Fair back in 2020 in the midst of the global covid pandemic. Travel restrictions were such that we were able to get out to Turkey and start shooting this story, but half way through the journey when we got to the city of Van, we heard that the British government were about to implement a ban on travel to and from Turkey and we were left trying to find a way out of the country and back to the UK. Sadly we never got to go back and finish the latter part of the planned trip.
As it was our trip took in various parts of Eastern Turkey and the area formally know as Mesopotamia. We started in Gaziantep and journeyed down the Euphrates, past the the Byzantine fortress of Rumkale, to visit the sunken city of Halfeti. We also took in the ancient archaeological site near Urfa of Göbekli Tepe. The site which was inhabited in 9500BC is a remarkable find and one that changed many of the perceived ideas of that age within the archaeological community. It is arguable one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the late 20th century. I was shooting some images on film – with my Leica m6 and my trusty Widelux (see Göbekli Tepe image).
We journeyed on to the The Holy Pools of Abraham in Urfa and the world UNESCO site, Mount Nemrut, ‘Mountain of Gods’ which dates back to 1st Century BC.
Passing through Diyarbakır on the river Tigris we entered Mardin with its breathtaking views over the flat plains toward the Syrian border.
Below the Monastery of Deir-Al_Zafran, otherwise known as the Saffron Monastery, founded in 493AD and was the headquarters of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1160 to 1932. The church still uses Aramaic, Jesus’ language, as its liturgical tongue.
From here we continued on towards the lost ancient city of Hasankeyf which was deliberately flooded on the Tigris for a controversial dam project.
