The Last Stablemen of the Island

Büyükada, Istanbul — 2014

Behind the Victorian mansions and the pine-scented promenades of Büyükada — Istanbul’s largest Prince’s Island — there was a hidden city. A settlement of canvas, scrap wood, and horsehair where the island’s stablemen lived alongside their animals in makeshift shelters they called home.

For over a century, horse-drawn carriages were the only means of transport on the Princes’ Islands. No engines were permitted. The horses carried the tourists, the residents, the cargo — and the stablemen carried the horses. Most came as seasonal workers from eastern Turkey: young men who arrived with nothing and slept on mattresses laid over the stable floors, separated from the animals by a plank of wood.

They were not supposed to let anyone in.

I was given access to the stables behind Büyükada’s hills in 2014 — a world invisible to the day-trippers below. What I found was not cruelty or spectacle, but something quieter: a community of men who had built an entire life in a space society preferred not to see.

In January 2020, Istanbul’s Metropolitan Assembly voted unanimously to ban all horse-drawn carriages from the islands. The horses were removed. The stables were dismantled. The stablemen disappeared.

This series is their only record.

Black and white documentary photograph of a young stableman standing in a doorway between daylight and the dark stable interior, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *Every doorway is a threshold between two worlds. His is between daylight and the dark interior where he sleeps above the horses.*

Black and white documentary photograph of a young stableman resting on a mattress with horses visible in the background, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *Rest comes in stolen hours. The mattress is shared with the scent of hay and the sound of hooves shifting on packed earth.*
Jury Special Award — Adalar Municipality Photography Competition

Black and white documentary photograph of two stablemen standing at the entrance of a makeshift stable shelter, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *Two men, one entrance. The structure behind them is a home built from whatever the island discarded.*

Black and white documentary photograph of shoes, a water jug, and a television on bare ground inside a stableman's living quarters, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *The shoes tell you everything. Shoes lined up on bare ground next to a water jug and a television balanced on cinder blocks. This is a living room.*

Black and white documentary photograph of a young stableman smiling with a bunk bed and hanging clothes in the background, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *Youth finds a way. Behind the grin: a bunk bed, hanging clothes, peeling wood. The quarters of a seasonal worker who will be gone by winter.*

Black and white documentary photograph of stablemen performing hoof care on a horse with a bucket and brush, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *The craft requires no diploma. A bucket, a brush, bare hands, and the patience to hold a leg that could kick you into next week.*

Black and white documentary photograph of a boy leading a horse along a back road near greenhouses and makeshift paddocks, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *The next generation learns by doing. Between the greenhouses and the makeshift paddocks, the island’s back roads belong to the horses and the boys who tend them.*

Black and white documentary photograph of two elderly stablemen sharing a laugh beside a loaded cart while one smokes a cigarette, Büyükada, Istanbul, 2014 by Tarık Kaan Muslu — *The day continues. A cigarette, a loaded cart, a laugh shared between men who have done this work longer than most of us have been alive.*

This series is their only record.