Cemre Yeşil (CY): Our summer house in Celaliye, Istanbul is the most significant place that I can think of when it comes to my childhood. I guess it has to do with the endless happy memories of a child girl with a tanned skin, which doesn’t involve any concern or anxiety except of a desire for ice-cream or spending more time in the sea. In my mind, the image of the summer house also represents intimate and close family relations in which my parents and grandparents from both sides were deeply involved in my life and each other’s lives. Now that they are no longer alive and nothing is the same anymore, going back to this summer house gives me great melancholy along with a great appreciation of a very happy childhood.

 

 

CY: My city, Istanbul is the most beautiful city I have ever been. It is filled with contradictions, surprises, authenticity, history, poetry, an amazing mixture of different cultures and traditions, delicious food, surrounded with water, an open sky where you can feel with all your five senses what the colour of blue can mean. Istanbul is a blue mythology.

 

 

CY: The forces of creation for my research was a moment of loss. I remember my mother at my grandmother's deathbed. The crescendo of the oxygen detector's signal became the music of desperation while my mother was holding and kissing my grandmother's feet for the very last time. That moment became the moment that forced my creative production for this research, a work which is rooted from my anticipatory fear of experiencing the same moment with my own mother. My work thus became a process of a premature mourning for my living mother. The origins of my research titled The Photographic Embodiment of an Embrace: The Mother-Child Constellation as a Paradigm to Explore How the Photographic Double Portrait Manifests Both the Physical and Mental Relationship Between Self and (M)other. — is subjective that I began by using the medium of photography to question my origin and my own referent, my mother. My choice of theoretical and practical frameworks are determined by their use for rethinking about both the photographic medium—double portrait in particular— and the relationship between mother and adult child. Throughout the process of making a photographic investigation about the continuing need of adult-child for the mother, I am looking at certain photographic traditions, certain uses of photography and bodies of photographic works by some artists that manifests the physical and visual need for the (m)other within a photographic encounter for two reasons: One reason for me is to examine how the physical need for the (m)other’s body that comes visible through a constellation of two bodies or body parts turns into a visual need within the final photographic image that in return becomes a signifier or a metaphor of the emotional need between the sitters. The second reason is that examining and creating photographic images that execute the physical and visual need for the (m)other through different reasons and aspects provides a chance to think about the absence of the (m)other within a bodily constellation which opens up to a context that is very central for me to discuss in relation to this continuing need of the adult-child for the mother.

 

If I need to reflect on the process a little bit, I must say that PhD is a tough road. I enjoy teaching a lot because I learn a lot through teaching which was the main reason I applied for a PhD degree in the first place. However, I really struggle through the process of trying to find a balance between academia and art world. I have a love and hate relationship with it. I don’t know if I ever will be able to survive and finish it.

 

 

CY: I had a unique experience in the residency with Antoine D’agata. We were 13 photographers around the globe who stayed in the same flat for a month and we had to produce a body of photographic work during the residency. We had group critics almost everyday about our work in progress. I must admit that the first two weeks were very difficult for me; I didn’t know what to photograph, I couldn’t come up with a specific interest to work on. I had the keyword of ‘longing’ in my mind, but I didn’t know what to photograph. Also not speaking French in Marseille was a barrier for me to get involved in the local stories or with local people. For two weeks, I struggled. Then, I met a man on street who had a broken Turkish, he left Turkey when he was a little kid. We made friends with him, he introduced me to his wife. One day, when I was overwhelmed with not having an idea to work on photographically, I left my camera at home and went for a long walk with him. That day, we passed by a children play ground. There I found, why I was interested in the concept of longing and what I was longing for. Before that day, I knew that I was longing for something but I wasn't sure what it was. Although there were times that I thought I knew, I kept looking for it. Sometimes the things we long for replace each other in the flow of life, but at a certain point, we come to realise that some of the things we long for, are never coming back. This series of photographs was my discovery of what I long for and I photographed children focusing on their way of appreciating the sunshine, the wind and the gravity in relation to the act of playing. I knew that what I was focusing photographically through children was something that I was not capable to feel anymore because of my growing pains.

 

Let's talk about Filbooks, a space dedicated to photo books, coffee and workshop... Now that you have started this project, what is the city reaction? How do you position and intersect with the city's photo community? 

CY: We opened FiLBooks in 2015’s June. FiL means elephant in Turkish and our little elephant is more than one years old now. FiL is a bookshop-coffeeshop-workshop where one will be able to find photo books, artists’ publications, books on history and theory of photography, journals, children’s books, independent publications and little accessories. Also FiL is a meeting place that hosts workshops, artists talks, panels discussions and other collective activities. We are interested to explore photographic images and philosophies of the image that is invested in photographic and printed production. We define FiLBooks as a collaborative space or a hub for arts that focuses mainly on photography but its doors is open for other disciplines and ideas and we are very interested in inviting and organising talks and workshops with national and international artists, photographers and publishers who pass by Istanbul.We also organise book launches, screenings, pop-up events, little fairs and projects, therefore we are happy to be asked about hosting events. Recently we also supported the young German photographer Charlotte Schmitz’s exhibition titled ‘I am So Beautiful, So Beautiful’ and we published an artist book of her. We have organised and hosted a remarkable amount of workshops and events in our first year and we intend to grow organically within our little photo community. I can say that many photography students or people interested in photography spend time at FiLBooks. However, one of the reasons we run a coffee shop along with our bookshop and workshop space is not only to survive financially, but also to introduce people who just come to have a coffee with photography books and enrich the photography and photo book culture within our society. Also we liked the idea of creating a casual space for photographers and artists to enjoy a cup of coffee together, surrounded by photography books.

 

 

 

CY: I am a big fan of Italian book maker Bruno Munari and we have a big selection of his books. One would be: ‘Never Content’ by Bruno Munari. I really like David Campany’s books. His recent book published by MACK is outstanding: ‘A Handful of Dust’. The last one can be Turkish Photographer Kürşat Bayhan’s very recent book ‘Last Exit’ which will be in FiL’s shelf very soon.

 

 

CY: First of all, I have never had such a gigantic prints of my work before. Seeing our photos in a huge scale in Lecce’s beautiful ‘Piazza Sant'Oronzo’ was an experience of its own. I really felt very emotional at the very first moment I arrived to the square. I started watching people looking at our work and took a lot of pictures them. I also really enjoyed watching people who ignore the photos and use them as a back rest while sitting and drinking beer in the street. I also took photos of them which enriched our installation shots. Bitume festival is a very naive, yet beautiful festival. What I really liked about the festival was that it was really different than all the other festivals I have been. Generally in most of the photography festivals, you get overwhelmed by seeing exhibitions, attending talks and networking but Bitume Festival provided a space to comprehend what we have seen in the exhibitions, what we have discussed in the talks and most importantly it offered a casual and sincere atmosphere for meeting amazing people and get friends to share not only photography but life itself too which I really appreciated. Also the festival team was very friendly. The whole experience was super fun and very rewarding.

 

 

CY: We met with Maria in this residency at Atelier de Visu with Antoine D’agata. We became good friends and kept in touch ever since. Furthermore, I liked her work as a photographer very much. When I found about this underground yet rooted tradition of my city, I immediately shared it with Maria. She was amazed by it when I told her and I remember her saying ‘I can even see the photos that we will take in my mind now.’ Photography is such a lonely thing to do and it is all about giving decisions. Within my photographic work, I found myself a lot whining that I wish I had a second brain to ask its opinion. Maria became my second brain and so do I for her. Beyond communicating with the community of birdmen, this work became a way of communication between me and Maria. Actually, the reason why I mentioned this phenomenon of Birdmen to Maria in the first place, had to do with a matter of communication between us. Although Maria is originally Romanian, she was raised in Germany and she became German. However, she was still very connected to her homeland and mother tongue and whenever I spoke Turkish near her, she was trying to catch words that are similar to Romanian. One night, following such a conversation between us, we started a funny chat on how and why we hear the sounds of certain animals differently although the animals make the same sound everywhere. A chicken in Turkey and a chicken in Germany makes the same sound for example, but we hear them differently because of the language we speak and we imitate them differently. This basic behaviour suddenly seemed very odd and interesting to us and this was the moment when I told her about the Birdmen who are the masters of listening and imitating the singing birds of goldfinch and greenfinch. Then we just got amazed by the idea of photographing a relationship in which one part is invisible. 

 

 

 

CY: We have worked with the most amazing Spanish editor, Gonzalo Golpe. He was a real guide for us through the sequencing, editing, selecting images and telling our story. We were so lucky that he liked our work and he put his whole heart in it. He was sending us songs while we were working on the selection and sequencing. He was so poetic that he made us listen the same music so that it would help us to meet on a similar ground of editing photos of ‘bird songs’. For Birds’ Sake would not be as strong as it is if he wouldn’t be involved in our book. We also worked with an established publisher La Fabrica and Alvaro Matias to begin with, all the team believed in our birds and they were very supportive. In the end it became a beautiful book designed by Ramon Pez. The unusual packaging that mimics the content of the story was something I was obsessed with. I had this idea in my mind before we even finished the project and met our publisher. Both me and Maria liked the idea of treating the object of book as a bird cage and this time the cage contained our photos rather than the bird itself. 

 

 

CY: Never forget that the essential is invisible to the eye. If you try enough, you might have a little chance to understand the essential through the eye of the camera.

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LINKS
Cemre Yeşil  
Filbooks
La Fabrica (book available)