Turkey in mid-summer. The sun, the sea, and the road. In hindsight, it was a really good trip although I didn’t think so at the time. Thought it was too hot, dry and dusty and if I never saw another bowl of salad leaves in my life again, it would be too soon. I hate raw foods. You get sick on the road ingesting raw foods. You never rightly know if they’re been properly washed (or washed at all) and what they’re been washed in (the mind boogles at the possibilities.) But, at least the air-conditioning worked as it should, Magnums were dirt cheap and easy to come by, and I got myself a pound of really good Turkish nougat. The sort of stuff that came sliced off the end of a long, tight, sticky roll coated with chopped green pistachio nuts. Heaven…Oh and fried fish sandwiches, you should definitely have a couple of those when you’re in Istanbul. They’re good when they’re hot with extra yogurt/mint sauce.

On a sad note, these are the last set of decent photos I got out of the Agfa Isola before it got caught in a minor scuffle at a hotel in Damascus. Had a run-in over the bell hop over luggage. My own luggage. The lens fortunately didn’t get smashed and the shutter still fires, small mercies, but the Agfa’s shooting days are over. The shutter’s sluggish and the speed’s all wrong. Tried to work round the kinks – I love that camera – but, after viewing the last series of photos from spain, even I have to concede that it would be in everyone’s best interest to retire my beloved Agfa into the dry box.

 *sob*

~ ANDERS, 2011

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