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.
TOPARLANIN GİTMİYORUZ
(cyanotype on leather, felt,cotton,brass frame, archival photographs,variable dimensions)
İn his project titled Pack Up, We Are Not Leaving, Reşit Şimşek conducts a micro-historical reading centered on Tarsus, examining the socio-cultural layers of the Çukurova region through an archival methodology. The work focuses on the cultural heritage of Nomadic (Yörük) and
Armenian communities who shared the same geography and experienced historical intersections in their practices of production, nutrition, and daily life.The artist interweaves the traditional cyanotype printing technique with the collective memory of
materials:
Found photographs belonging to the region's Yörük people are combined with traditional production materials such as cotton and felt. Carpet motifs borrowed from Prof. Dr. Taciser Onuk’s study, "Handicrafts of Tarsus," are integrated with saddlebags (heybeler) and reconstructed as graphical elements accompanying the visuals.Historical photographs of the Darson Armenians—sourced from the Houshamadyan archive—
are printed onto leather surfaces, referencing the community’s ancestral ties to metallurgy and leatherworking. These pieces are then sealed within brass frames handcrafted by the artist. This interdisciplinary approach allows the viewer to interpret the convergences and divergences
of two distinct cultures through the tactile nature of materials. Pack Up, We Are Not Leaving aims to build an experimental space that carries the visual memory of the past into the present, questioning the boundaries of social belonging and the locus of memory.
İSTANBUL SATICILARI 2
(ETKİLEŞİMLİ ENSTALASYON VE ARŞİV ÇALIŞMASI, 2025)
Bu proje, İstanbul'un kaybolmaya yüz tutmuş özel bahçelerinin ve iç avlularının 1960-1980 yılları arasındaki görsel dökümünü merkeze alıyor. Sanatçı, aile albümlerinden toplanan dia pozitifleri ve günümüzün dijital parçalanmışlığını bir araya getirerek, mekansal hafızanın katmanlarını sorguluyor. Bahçe estetiğinin toplumsal statü ve mahremiyetle olan ilişkisi, büyük formatlı baskılar ve botanik illüstrasyonlarla yeniden yorumlanıyor.
