Statement
For the last ten years, photography has been the medium through which I have been exploring myself and digging out my intentions and interference degree to what I choose to capture. As a photographer, getting fully conscious that I am and will be making choices whether it be the time, the place, the subject to photograph or, above all, the affective approach in which those will be captured was crucial in determining my stance on photography.
There is no getting away by saying that there are no conscious choices, because any photograph is at least the result of its photographer’s decision to capture a given moment; the photograph of that moment which would have never been made otherwise. I believe the act of taking and displaying photographs is, in most cases, similar to laying out the dirty laundry. In japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki’s words: “Well, it’s a tricky occupation. After all, what you’re doing is betraying people by releasing the shutter. You really are. It’s not all like this, but this certainly one side of the photographer’s job.” 1 This, maybe, is one of the results of photography’s fascinating, elusive and also illusive ability of documentation and representational potency.
Documentation in a large sense is a very important function of photography: it could be used to document factual events such as wars or more personal occasions such as birthdays or staged scenes in advertisement. At the very least, a photograph indicates that a certain “scene”, staged or not, existed at a certain moment. But the question of the photographer’s level of interference gains weight when authenticity of the subject or event is claimed. I do not believe in the total naiveness of a photographer’s intention in not interfering with his/her subject or event. Similarly, at the very least the photographer makes a decision and releases the shutter at a certain moment and creates a document which would have never existed otherwise.
Among other things, I am very much interested in documentation; the documentation of myself, of the people, places and events I experience through personal impressions. And these people, which, by allowing me to capture a unique moment and a representation of their beings, lend me a power of domination I wish to choose more carefully. Besides that I believe in laying out some my own dirty laundry, as I feel the impulse to be subject to the same exposure as my photographs’ subjects.
As I was discussing my photo series “Gratitude / Sükran” 2 with turkish artist and photographer Banu Cennetoglu 3, she made me realize that I have already made a more or less conscious choice I am determinate to pursue. The series consist of 198 snapshot Polaroids from my late grand-mother’s everyday life. Cennetoglu felt that the people in Nan Goldin’s snapshot photographs, except her early works, are somehow victimized by the power of the photographic image and its photographer. But in my series, according to her, my grand-mother seemed neither distant or hiding, nor surrendering. This sort of relationship between the photographer and its subject may only be made possible when the two sides are in such concordance. As the photographer, I wish to be able to sustain this kind of relationship nature to my subjects all along the way. I wish to not victimize them.
In this regard, I feel that it is essential to get more awareness about how subjects or events might get affected by these simple decisions, how these affect the meaning and interpretation of a certain photograph, and eventually how their effect might be diminished or enhanced. Furthermore I am willing to examine and attempt to define my own position regarding the authenticity and the interference level of the photographer to the object of its photograph when it comes to contemporary tendencies in documentary photography, namely subjective documentary and self-documentation.
As for the object of my photography in the near future, I wish to pursue my work on the exploration and externalization of my female gaze on the opposite gender and also on myself as an individual of the female sex. Photography seems to be the most adequate tool as it allows me some sort of libidinal release regardless of the object of the photographs. Actually my BA graduation photography book project “I was looking to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you” 4 was an initial conscious step in this quest. It is now ready to take on this next step.
1 Miki, A., Isshiki, Y. & Sato, T. eds (2006) Nobuyoshi Araki: self, life, death. Phaidon Press.
2 http://mimiko.net/blog/index.php/2008/11/sukran-gratitude-2004-2008/
3 http://www.banucennetoglu.com
4 http://www.mimiko.net/blog/index.php/2008/12/baktim-sana-2008/
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