In poetically well-built museums, formed from the heart's compulsions, we are consoled not by finding in them old objects we love, but by losing all sense of Time. Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space Photograph: Masumiyet Müzesi
Every man's death begins with the death of his father. My father's death had turned all the familiar props of childhood into objects of immeasurable value, each one the vessel of a lost past Photograph: Masumiyet Müzesi
Yalıs are the most distinctive manifestations of what the melancholic, nostalgic writer Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar termed 'Bosphorus civilization'; this portrait of my recollections from yalı life – the boathouses and rowing trips, the high ceilings, the enormous ships sailing so close by that it seemed as if they were passing through the living room, fishing on the shore, the food and fried mackerel on the table – is inspired by memories of 16th- and 17th-century Dutch still-life painting Photograph: Masumiyet Müzesi
We settled down for a picnic on a meadow looking out at the view painted in this Antoine Ignace Melling (1763-1831) landscape. I exhibit the thermos filled with tea, stuffed grape leaves, boiled eggs and some Meltem bottles to evoke our Sunday excursion that may offer the visitor some relief from the oppressive succession of interior settings, as well as my own agony. But neither the reader nor the visitor should on any account think that I could forget my pain even for an instant Photograph: Masumiyet Müzesi
Visitors to my Museum of Innocence must compel themselves, therefore, to view all objects displayed therein – the buttons, toys, Füsun's combs, tickets and old photographs – not as real things in the present moment, but as my memories Photograph: Masumiyet Müzesi
