Turkey’s doyen of photography Ara Guler has amassed a vast archive spanning hundreds of thousands photos over decades of shooting in Istanbul, throughout Turkey and all over the world. His incredible body of work, known for evocatively memorializing distinct periods of an Istanbul since buried in history, has inspired the creation of its own museum.

The unveiling of the museum, in Istanbul's Bomontiada complex, coincided with the 90th birthday of Guler, who has been dubbed “the Eye of Istanbul” for his breathtaking work that zoomed in on daily life in his beloved city over the decades.

The inaugural exhibition “Islik Calan Adam” ("The Whistling Man") runs until Nov. 15 and is free to visitors. It features an array of his iconic work, including photographs from a 1952 reportage Guler conducted with Armenian fisherman in the Istanbul district of Kumkapi. One particularly striking image is of a fisherman with a cigarette in his mouth standing stoically on a boat under a foreboding sky with the old city eerily framing the background.

Himself of Armenian descent, Guler was born Migirdic Ara Derderyan in Istanbul in 1928. His family took the last name Guler with the 1934 Surnames Law. He began his career at a local newspaper in 1950, and his work ended up taking him across the globe. The exhibition features shots he took of the Eritrean civil war. It also includes portraits of famous artists such as Tennessee Williams, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.