Artist Statement
You see, I don’t often think about these things; I just do it, I take photos. I’ve attempted to trace the urge back to something, anything, but I came back with nothing. I simply don’t know what makes me do it. Surely, in time, it has gained an artistic intent; yet I call myself a photographer, not an artist. Not because the latter is such a divine title, but mainly because I find it doesn’t encapsulate this existence I’ve chosen.
In short, photographer is a better word for what I am. Primarily, it’s technical: it leads you to a measurable set of skills, which gives me an ease of mind. But I think, most importantly, it’s poetic: I was undeniably there, I took the photograph, and that’s more than enough to call myself one. A photographer; someone who works with photons, and so on. Yes, this is exactly why my work is, and will always be, documentarian.
But I photograph invisible things; I call it the quiet tension of Istanbul. I’ve always been after peculiar things in my stories. Everything started with me getting obsessed with a hotel construction site. Later, I started questioning the fabric of the city. Then, I couldn’t stop thinking about an earthquake that hasn’t happened yet. I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint what those pictures show, but you can’t deny that you feel it, too. The stories I’ve mentioned have laid the foundation of my approach.
Personal psychogeography has always been the best phrase to describe my method, if there has ever been one. Once, I said: “I’m a street photographer who turns his camera towards himself.” Not a bad quote, if you ask me. And it’s accurate, too. Ultimately, these aren’t simply photographic documents of the everyday in Istanbul; they are about how I navigate it, how I exist in it.
It was before I met photography. One evening, I watched Dario Argento’s 1977 film Suspiria, and I couldn’t get over how beautiful the colours were. I had also been looking at a lot of paintings at the time, simply because I enjoyed getting lost in them; and the film taught me that colours can be a part of a narrative. So, in 2017, I tried to adapt them to my photos. I failed. Instead, I was left with something entirely unique to myself. To this day, I use more or less the same palette. I secretly believe that it’s the vessel for that feeling of unease in my stories.
But something is clearly amiss with the city. This is the only statement I want to leave behind with my photographs.
