Turning (An Exhibition)

A year ago, I had a photography exhibition. I called it Turning, for a season of change.

It was the culmination of a long goal to have a solo show, as well as a specific collaboration with a space in my neighborhood called Nadas. In the statement I wrote for the exhibition (which is below), I mention that it had been nearly a year since I started shooting the project. Now it’s been a year since it was displayed. Again, time turns, maybe a bit more strangely this year, but inevitably.

All my images are analog double exposures, shot first as portraits in Nadas and then layered with blooming bits of my life. A year ago, a rollicking crowd filled Nadas to see my art on the walls, and I was so elated and exhausted that the whole glorious night seems like a woozy dream. I sold enough of the work to cover my costs in mounting an exhibition, a cherry on top.

Below is my exhibition statement, interspersed (like the rest of this post) with some of the images that were in the show. It’s a bit weird to reflect on this show— it feels like it wasn’t so long ago, and also feels like it happened in another world. But it’s important to remember the lovely bits, even if they’re in the past.

Turning (artist statement, 9/27/2019)

The idea for this project began with light– the way it slanted into Nadas’ sweet space, the way each room seemed to shimmer with sunshine. Now, it has spanned nearly a year, cutting across all the turning seasons– the heavy haze of winter, the blooming season bursting with tulips, summer as languorous as sugar on our tongues, and autumn when the pomegranates run red with ripeness.

In that year, some of the friends who participated in this project have left Istanbul for good, their faces flush with flowers that have long since faded. Time turns.

Shooting with film is a way of playing with time, both beholden to and held by the inevitability of days passing. Every image in this exhibition is a time capsule of two distinct moments. I shot all these portraits at Nadas over two separate days in October and November 2018; I shot the doubles throughout the year, in Los Angeles, in Istanbul, in a sunflower field in Kuyucak. 

I thought all of my images from this series would be deliberate— doubles based on some essence of my portrait subject, each portrait marked with meticulous notes, each layer deliberately curated. But, life is messier than that. I relearned the lesson I seem to receive every season: control is an illusion, and the most beautiful things come from letting go of it. 

So let’s keep moving forward, through these quickening days and the turning of seasons, ever closer to the light.