New Inspirers

Refik Akyüz, Serdar Darendeliler

CI MAG, Issue 2, April 2015

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Contemporary photography gained momentum with the mobilization of contemporary art in Turkey, especially since the 2000’s. The main component of this process that allowed photography to be recognized as an art and not an amateurish pastime - despite the lack of institutionalization, education, publication, criticism and creating audience - is the individual efforts of the photographers. Although photographers of different generations such as Nazif Topçuoğlu, Murat Germen, Ali Taptık and Yusuf Sevinçli have been influenced in their production by the world, they managed to create their own language; their representation in galleries abroad, the residences they’ve been welcomed, the contemporary photography reference books they’ve been included in and the festivals they’ve been invited to gained them international recognition.

On the institutional side, although there had been some activation from time to time, Turkey’s only commercial gallery exhibiting photography, Elipsis Gallery, closed down in the past months. This is the most recent indicator of the lack of a solid path on that matter. Today’s art galleries like The Empire Project, C.A.M, x-ist, Daire give place to photography in their program. On the non-commercial institutions side, museums open their doors to photography but they give the impression that they don’t move with a determination that would shape photography production and their international distribution. Even so, the increase of the number of photographers with
a contemporary approach and the rise of new and exhilarant names is promising.

The ‘New inspirers’ file developed with this idea of rise, includes a selection from five photographers that work in diffent styles and who have recently inaugurated their first solo exhibitions in Turkey. We hope that you will know them better and start to follow their work once you read their backgrounds and the answers they gave to the question “In short term period, what’s your dream/aim with regards to photography?” There are of course many other inspirer names that are not part of this selection, but let us now leave you with five of them.

(Excerpt from the article)

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