http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_37 children columns.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_1 arrowslit.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_5 Constantine.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_3 Tekfur Sarayi.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_7 column rose.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_25 tree heads.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_34 flags 1.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_56 Tekfur Sarayi ruins.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_39 flag bearers.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_46 topple.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_51 decapitation.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_35 children escaping.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_21 broken wall.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_58 flags 2.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_53 marble emperor.jpg
http://nfcallaway.com/files/gimgs/th-14_03YB_RnLxq8.jpg

In the centuries following the semi-abandonment of Constantinople after it was sacked by the Crusaders in 1204, the city’s famed rose bushes went wild. And so, when the Ottoman troops finally breached the city walls in May 1453, the roses were in full bloom. During the gradual demise of the Byzantine Empire, thousands of manuscripts made their way from East to West, in one of many factors that fostered the Renaissance, along with the rise of moveable type and the printing press in Europe. These ideas inform the loose narrative of The Fall of Constantinople. When I began to create it, carving rubber stamps by hand out of erasers, I had recently ended a year-long stint in Beirut, and was months away from becoming a father. If the first images were more of a reflection on the cruelty of the Syrian civil war, slowly the book was conquered not only by rose vines and architecture, but also by children and pregnant women, playing, working and plotting their escape.

Artist book (59 plates) and video (12').