THE SILENT LIGHT
What we receive through photographs can create different emotions; reality, conformability, or surrealism and fascination. Most of the time, we want to feel that magic unwittingly.
The human kind, who consciously or unconsciously sought for its own reality throughout the centuries, today has reached a point where he doubts reality when he is affected. The magic is being lost gradually as long as the bombardment of intensive technological miracles makes the quest for knowledge an ordinary thing rather than an extraordinary adventure.
The human being, who has the tendency to think that he has found what he is looking for perceives the existence of the horrible emptiness within himself only through the possibility of being filled.
What we unwittingly feel close to us is the puritan one. The documentary photographs, which establish a balance within the triangle of natural light, the reality that is lived and the existence of human beings, absorb us. Today attempting to reflect one’s reality has become very demanding . Thousands of card, development and camera options show us how to become more confused, instead of showing to obtain the possibility to communicate things more easily.
Who knows? Maybe under these complicated circumstances, the things that are illustrated by a man behind the lenses–who has discovered that communication can be provided only by an inner journey—can shake all of us.
An eye which has perfectly seen that it can reach the viewer with love, faith and only by owning each fragment. The more he owns them, the more we feel that the photographs belong to us. The light which you consider artificial is the natural light itself, and we feel it is close to us.
What we witness in each fragment is an artfully balanced and intensive and delicate laboratory work and the equilibrium between black, grey and white which does not deny experience. Fortunately, it decides on white at the entrance to hope. The photographs are combinations of a black-and-white work’s allurement and the images’ autobiographical reflections.
We leave the exhibition with the confidence that we obtain from the fact that everything is in order, a comfort that we have for no reason, and the serenity that arises from the comprehension which lets us know that the people, who told us the far-away village is our village, are not liars…
Nilgün Günden Göğer
January 2001
THE DISTANT LIGHT
Everybody keeps himself to himself… The man with the flat cap, the relative in the coffeehouse, the girl with the bright scarf, the old man wearing a fur cap, the friends walking toward the mosque under night light, the old woman carrying a feedbag. They all keep themselves to themselves…
Is everything static or the time has frozen? In this solitude, the existence of a second platform at the train station, and even the presence of cars amaze a person. Who goes to and comes from where and why? Days and nights which are static, settled, neutral but also keep on moving … I wonder if this cold is present to avoid corruption and to keep everything the same.
Everything from the old man who is gazing at us and wearing a fur cap to the extraordinary stone buildings reminds us of a Dostoyevsky novel. The man at the train station, the crooked railroads, the gloomy train station, a man, again a lonely man, the dog is also alone. While wondering whether there could be more happiness, some children playing games and a wedding appear in front us. Also that who has the star and crescent even on the sledge which is pulled by horses.
All the photographs also keep themselves to themselves. Everything is so convenient to the environment which it is in. All of them, this black-and-whiteness suit Kadir a lot. A. Kadir Ekinci is now at this point: We see a photograph somewhere, and without thinking we say that it belongs to Kadir.
Nilgün Günden Göğer
December 2009
English
Türkçe
