Turkey

Only in Turkey…

It’s the merhaba word twirled around my tongue. A book in Turkish filled with phrases hard to understand and the letters o and u topped with two dots. It means Strong Anatolia though in the French school manuals it goes as The Kemalist Laic Republic of Turkey (La Republique Laique et Kemaliste de la Turquie).

Cumhuriyet (Republic) square, Ataturk Boulevard, which ever city I’m in. The muddy napkins lying around in the rainy streets of Uskudar and the wet grass during the spring festivals at the METU campus. The Black Sea that smells like tea and just next to it, the freezing Aegen one. The green plateaus and brown plains stretching from Istanbul to Agri.

Nazim Hikmet’s ginger hair and the bakeries who don’t know the difference between blackberries and raspberries. Mihlama and olive oil dolma (Turkish cuisine) followed by saz, kemenche, belly dances and horon stepping. A little Garip (Bizarre, magazine) and a little like Pamuk (Cotton, Turkish writer).

A small tea glass with a narrow waist.

Georgia

A fierce and violent green jungle.

The orthodox fausse-blonde girl-next-door who although appears very chaste on the outside is actually very pompous on the inside. At the same time, it’s the very sweet and chubby cow, whose name ends in ishvili and who likes to walk around in the middle of the road, surrounded by black flies and who taught me life and happiness. As well as the handsome young man with the blues eyes, sipping a sweet wine.

Elegant teenagers talking as if they were about to vomit. Plus, it’s as if they threw a plate of spaghetti on the wall in order to create the Georgian alphabet. The spaghetti is actually a greasy and doughy pie, though it could also be a humid and rainy long boulevard. Or even the shiny pink color the Rose Revolution brought with him and the gentle Art Nouveau styled balconies under the invasion of the previously mentioned color.

Adjara, forbidden Abakhazia and Ozurgheti. Batumi, Poti, Kutaisi, Tblisi. Rustaveli avenue and Pushkin street. Sometimes sparkly and irrelevant colored lights. The little cabin where Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili was born. The Lenin poster in the back of a shoe workshop.

The cunning gypsy whom I taught French to: “Je m’appelle Canard” (My name’s Duck”).

Photography

Everything. Everyone.

This and that.

The glaring old man, children running after me.

An old dream reappearing before my eyes, a difficult to decipher and mysterious idea that I feel like sharing with the world.

The depths of my mind, the eyes of humans.

The thing I look for most in a successful shot is for the viewers to create their own stories. Exactly how I invent a tale upon viewing a photograph, a painting a sculpture, I would like other people to recognize their own worlds in my pictures. If my goal is not to share a message or to present someone as they are to the world, I like to hear the viewer’s first thoughts without giving any information about the photographs. If it means making a handful of people ponder upon something they do not grasp, they do not know it’s enough for me. At least they didn’t search for the easy way out.

White

An empty canvas.

In China, it stands for death while in the west it symbolizes purity. It’s also the color of royalty in France and Russia.

A white skin and the light summer dress hanging over it.

Digital Photography

Cheaper than film photography.

A lot cheaper.

Idol

The people I’ve never met in my life.

They’re not the kind of people who’ve achieved anything important. They’re usually found in books. They’re usually Russian or sometimes Turkish. It’s hard to find Americans amongst them.

They’re usually honest people who always stand up for what they believe in. Though sometimes they really don’t care about a whole lot. I know everything yet nothing about them. Although I’m an omnipresent aspect in their lives, I stare at them behind a window, as if I was God.

They usually have three names. They’ve lived in the 19th or the 20th centuries.

When I close my eyes I tend to see them, if they’re still there when I open them it either means I’m in love or a complete lunatic.

Nevertheless they always are a great source of inspiration to me.

Cinema

I’m not sure why but when people hear that I’m involved in photography they immediately tend to believe that I have an interest in cinema. Still I have nothing whatsoever to do with cinematography. It’s true that I enjoy watching a good movie from time to time but it’s certainly not my area of expertise. All the same I can’t say ‘no’ to an exquisite independent film with a very hard to understand and interesting subject.

Fear

Needles, lots and lots of needles, pointy, grey needles.

Oyun

From the little kids skipping ropes in front of the building to the grannies gathered around a table playing cards.

Something to amuse you, to make you happy and take to another realm to make you relax even if it means for a few measly seconds. When you laugh after finally finishing a round of Monopoly, the few seconds you’re hanging in the air while skipping rope, the bliss you share with the people around you.

Of course it’s important to learn how to be a good looser.

2050

Way too far. Carpe diem, carpe diem.