Narratives from the Private

26 March-15 June 2008, Malmö Museum, Malmö, Sweden

Artists: Silva Bingaz, Korhan Karaoysal, Özlem Şimşek, Ali Taptık, Serkan Taycan

Curators: Refik Akyüz, Serdar Darendeliler

 

'Narratives from the Private' was a multimedia exhibition conceived as part of a year-long series of events organised by Citizens Without Boundaries and Anadolu Kültür in Istanbul, Diyarbakır, and Malmö. Rather than offering direct representations of life in Türkiye, the exhibition brought together personal documentaries that offered clues and fragments through which broader realities could be approached. The strength of these five works lies in the photographers’ ability to transform their own lives and personal experiences into narratives with universal resonances. At the same time, they stand out as distinctive examples of a new approach to documentary photography that had become increasingly visible in Türkiye in recent years.

The photographers featured in Narratives from the Private turn primarily towards themselves, their families, circles of friends, the cities they inhabit, and the particular moments in which they live, approaching these subjects through highly individual perspectives and visual languages. In 'Kader ve Kaza', Ali Taptık draws on himself, his relationships, his friends, and the city he lives in to create universal images that prompt us to question our sense of time and place. Similarly, in 'Deficient Insight', Korhan Karaoysal photographs his family, friends, objects in his home, and the ordinary events of everyday life as a way of trying to understand his own emotional state through photography.

One of the youngest photographers in the exhibition, Özlem Şimşek offers a contemporary example of how the personal can also contain emotions shared by everyone in her work 'Take Care of Yourself'. In 'Coast', Silva Bingaz moves along a metaphorical shoreline between the weight and lightness of existence, bringing together portraits of herself, her baby, her family, and complete strangers with striking details from nature. The final photographer featured in 'Narratives from the Private', Serkan Taycan, revisits his youth during the final years of his university education in 'Young; Me', telling these memories from the inside, in a direct and unadorned visual language.