Cornucopia’s ‘photographer at large’ Monica Fritz is having an exhibition of her personal photography at the Şule Gazioğlu Gallery in Emirgan. Her images are full of charm and wit, a touch of Sempé-meets-Cartier Bresson but with a very Monica twist. The Şule Gazioğlu Gallery shows are always a treat. It is on the Bosphorus, just downstream from the Sakıp Sabancı Museum and the Emirgan boatstop, and it was there we discovered another superb contributor to Cornucopia, Annette Louise Solakoğlu, whose train to Kars featured in Cornucopia 66.
Monica has photographed countless stories for Cornucopia over the past decade, and also helped to create Cornucopia’s 2023 book Don McCullin: Journeys Across Roman Asia Minor, and took the iconic portrait of Sir Don with Barnaby Rogerson at Aphrodisias. As Barnaby wrote: ‘Monica was our updated version of a traditional dragoman guide, busily plotting routes and unearthing interesting restaurants. She is also a first-rate photographer and as the child of a radical poet and a symbolist painter, and the mother of Turkey’s youngest punk band.’
There is a gentle empathy that underlies all of Monica’s images, as she observes the people around her observing the world. This is a show not to miss.
About Monica:
Monica Fritz was born in New York City in 1958, and has been photographing the world around her since she was 18 years old. She studied photography as a student of Fine Art in Florence, Italy, and later moved to Milan where she was a freelance photographer for various Interior Design and Architectural Design publications. Her photographic world expanded in 1994, when she was commissioned to go to Yemen to photograph the country for a travel agency. That turned into a one year project, and two years later she settled in Istanbul where she is the ‘photographer at large’ for Cornucopia Magazine, as well as contributing photographer for other International magazines and journals.