Child City: Photographs from Salı Pazarı Flea Market (2025, Istanbul)

This project explores Salı Pazarı Flea Market as a subterranean, collective memory of the city, where anonymous objects reveal stories of the younger residents of the city, the children. The project focused on worn and beloved toys on the market stalls, tracing the marks of affection left by children. By attending to these signs of care, the project reflects on how personal histories read through discarded toys, contribute to a city’s character and soul, highlighting the layers of memory, attachment, and belonging embedded in urban life.

The project has a very simple starting point: If these are some of the favourite toys of this city's children, and they are the future adults who will help create a big part of the city's distinct character, its soul; can we also look at these toys and think of them as different childhoods of the city itself?