PERA'NIN ESKİ BİR SOKAĞINDA
(CYANOTYPE ON FILM BOX , 2024)
The project is the outcome of a five-year archival research, bringing together portraits of women produced in Beyoğlu between 1950 and 1975 with contemporary portraits of women photographed by the artist on 35 mm analogue film. Composed largely of Kodak film archives, the selected material is reinterpreted through the cyanotype process, while discarded film boxes are transformed into alternative printing surfaces that reference photography's own material history. By layering representations of women from different historical periods onto a single visual plane, the work approaches photography not merely as a medium of representation, but as a material object that carries memory. In doing so, individual portraits become fragments of a shared collective memory, situated within the continuity of the archive.
KLÖB YASEMİN
(PHOTOBOOK & INSTALLATION , 2024)
The project is rooted in a collection of photographic service cards, which constitute a significant archival record of Istanbul's entertainment culture and tavern life. Gathered over an extended period, these materials were examined through their visual language, graphic design, and patterns of use. The research evolved from a speculative question: What form might these photographic services have taken had they continued to exist today?
Responding to this inquiry, a new series of photographic service cards was produced using analogue photographic processes and darkroom techniques that deliberately echo the aesthetic and material concerns of the original archive. Their distinctive graphic language, typography, and handwritten annotations are approached not merely as documentary elements, but as cultural signifiers that reveal the social practices and visual conventions of a particular historical moment. Extending this methodology, new service cards were created for the contemporary taverns documented within the project, establishing a visual and conceptual continuity between archival material and present-day production.
By juxtaposing historical and newly produced images, the project proposes a socio-economic reading through gestures, body language, facial expressions, table settings, textiles, and graphic elements. In doing so, it examines both continuity and transformation across generations, while investigating the relationship between sites of collective memory and the changing social landscape of the city. Rather than treating the archive as a static record of the past, the project positions it as an active medium through which contemporary cultural identities and modes of social interaction can be reimagined.