“Ne var ne yok?”

is a common way to ask “what’s up?” in Turkish. Literally, it translates to “what is and what isn’t?” I used this as a mantra as I walked around Istanbul with my camera in March, looking for what is and isn’t in the city – or perhaps, what is rendered seen and unseen.

Like in any big city (and Istanbul, with more than 16 million people, is big), movement is so constant in the old Ottoman capital that it seems to have its own inertia. But two events in March applied enough external force upon the city to change its state of motion: the holy month of Ramadan, and the arrest of the city’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu. As I followed both the spiritual and political happenings – feasts, demonstrations, calls to prayer, marches – I made pictures with the intention of bringing viewers into the city’s unseen spaces: train stations where protestors prepare to march, service workers across the city, and fasters ready for evening prayer.