by Ilgın Deniz Akseloğlu
Last week, I was having coffee with a photographer I’d newly met, whose works I had not seen before. I found them to embody a surprising and special, imaginary quality. Normally, I tend to be impressed by available light photography, but this guy’s set-ups immediately touched me somewhere in my head that I hadn’t even been aware of. He suddenly said, “Well, I’m happy with what you’re saying but, let me ask, do you like them?” I didn’t hesitate in answering, “If I said I didn’t like them, for me it would be like saying that Russian is an ugly language, or there is no need for Arabic, or I wish Sanskrit had never been invented. Your work has its own language, and the more you get to know it, the more it makes room for different tastes.”
I was reminded of this conversation after interviewing Asli Narin, Irem Sözen, Kürsat Bayhan – three Istanbul-based photographers whose styles and working disciplines are extremely different from each other.
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