About: Cay
The Turkish Black Sea coast enchants its visitors with wild and romantic valleys, exotic-looking tea mountains and the history of long-forgotten empires.
While the Mediterranean capitals are famous for their beautiful beaches, Istanbul cultivates its cosmopolitan flair and the west attracts visitors with the wonders of antiquity, the Black Sea coast impresses with its generous nature.
I was invited to explore the area and from the very first moment, I was fascinated by its enigmatic and exotic beauty.
Sometimes you think you’re somewhere in China or India, the tea mountains with their terraces have been cultivated since the 1930s, when coffee was replaced by tea as the Turkish national drink. I learned how the tea is processed until it finally ends up in the tea tulip to be drunk hot and steaming.
As this is not a journalistic blog, I would just like to present a few fascinating shots. The area around Rize is lonely, there are wild gorges and very high plateaus, such as the Ayder Plateau. The way there is arduous and mostly leads over small, unpaved roads, you have to trust your driver to get there.
I travel a lot in Turkey, which is no longer so easy for journalists. You now have to be careful what you write. For example, a political aritocrat from Rize (certainly located on the nationalist spectrum) complained that I referred to the Pontic Mountains as such and turned it into a political issue. For him, the Pontic Mountains do not exist, it must be called Kaçgar Daglar, any allusion to Greek history is undesirable. I had to adapt the text in order to be allowed to publish it at all. This is done – grudgingly – at the will of diplomacy.
The landscape and the people console you for such inconveniences, which I am sure many other journalists have also experienced, especially when expressing themselves politically.
Atatürk is omnipresent. I’m sure not to the delight of some senior politicians at the very top of modern Turkey. Religion is interfering more and more in politics, which is never good!
The girl in the tee works hard. Not necessarily always with the plants. The organizers of such press trips of course organize the appropriate stage sets as far as possible. However, this does not detract from the authenticity, as I sought contact with the local population as often as I could, but the people there are very reserved.
One evening I couldn’t sleep properly and was awake early in the morning, it must have been around 05:00. The colors and textures were indescribably subtle; sea and sky became a single element at that hour.
I am presenting a tiny selection here, soon you will be able to purchase these wonderful photographs as fine prints in my store.
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