The first image is one that “shows” the camera’s power to make the different, the shock, the other an object available for your “experience.” This is an image that implicates you as an “outsider” in your use of technology to handle the new and the excess of sensations that comes with being in a new world such as Istanbul. Boredom and sleepiness are other ways that we deal with this excess of sensation or “shock.”
#1. Staring through a shopwindow
This picture shows the shock coming from the culture of Istanbul by the power of camera. I am an outsider seeing so many amazing handmade work, and the aura of culture of Istanbul is delivering to me from the store through the shopwindow. Camera put all these work together and focus on the colorful plates, which presents a feeling that a guest is just staring at them outside the shop.
The second image is one that conveys for you a difference or otherness in the buildt environment or social spaces of Istanbul that in some way has surprised or shocked you. This image does not try to control the shock but instead to focus on it, to try to linger on this shock.
#2. Hi, who are you?
The buildings, and even the children are also the social environment of Istanbul. They treated us as outsiders, so they looked and followed us. On the other side, I was also aware of their differences: their living environment, their behaviors. My image just focus on this environmental differences.
The third image should be one that you think helps you convey the “limit” or the violene of the camera. That is, this image is one that is important to you because it somehow comments on the technology that you use to capture this image.
#3. Window, Shadow
The limit of the camera is that you can never put the whole beautiful outside view and the inside view together. Window sometimes connects both of them, but sometimes it still separates them. Window also presents some kind of desire for outside world. I try to capture this feeling in my image and contrast the bright outside and dim inside environment, but there are still some limits.
The fourth image engages the politics of photography in the non-western world. Historically the camera has been seen as offering Westerners the truth of the Orient. The camera is used less as an apparatus of art than it has been used as an apparatus of scientific truth when picturing the non-west. To counter this it is important to think of images or shots that for you either undo the west/non-west binary in some way or that pushes the image away from being scientific document and toward being more of an artistic composition. As an artistic composition the image is valuable because it demands interpretation. Can you come up with an image in the city that for you is so complex that it demands interpretation?
#4. Even not beautiful
I am always wondering: how can they put their cloths on that line. Just like I am always wondering: how can they build such an amazing city. The cloth, the sky, and the girl looking from the window are all show the complication of this old city. It's hard to interpret this image, but this may be just the truth of Orient. Orient never leaves people a sense of rich, developed, high-tech, and modern feeling, but people are still making their own lives using their intelligence and perspiration. Even the hanging cloth are not beautiful, that's the style of living.
The fifth picture should convey your struggle to capture deeply personal memory through an image. Is there an image that you have or could take that is meaningful to you because it evokes personal memory? How do you take that picture without loosing its quality as a memory?
#5. Past is living in memory
Maybe because I come from an Asian country, Istanbul gives me so much deja vu(the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. From Wikipedia)
The sixth and seventh images are related to our three lectures by Jen, Orhan, and Didem. Can you take two pictures in the city/of the city that you think conveys or aids in conveying what you have taken away from these first three lectures. What in the lectures was most rich and meaningful to you. What was the take away for you? Power and inequality? Cities and their complex relation to nations? Modernity and its demand for homogeneous citizens? States and the way they hide their violence through what a citizen sees and remembers (ie, gentrification).
#6. The wall of Hagia Sophia Church
#7. Who cares us?
The trip in Istanbul gave me more than I expected. I was shocked by this old city every day and every time. I still remember the surprise showing on my face when I saw birds flying around the Galata Tower the night we just arrived. I asked others why this happened. They told me sometimes they can’t understand an ancient city. There are so many mysteries in such an old city. Especially, after the three lectures by Jen, Orhan, and Didem I was sure that every part of this city is worth to explore and think.
After I went to Immigrants Center I could understand the view of Saskia Sassen better. Because of the threaten of people’s life and endless wars in their own country, people run away to the other countries for surviving. They are not the threatening outsiders but the people who want to seek a safe place. Like the research done by the Immigrants Center, most of them, especially the younger generation, they want to go back if their home country can provide a safe place for living. When I saw the pictures taken by Immigrants Center I was shocked by the living condition of those immigrants' own countries. Most pictures are about children. There are three pictures left me deep impressions. One is about the child laborers: some girls and boys are working in a factory. They are doing sewing. They look much younger than me, but they are not in school any more. They begin to make money by themselves in such a young age. Another one is two boys playing near a dirty river. Even the water is dirty, but from their faces you can see they are happy. I staring at another picture for a long time when I first saw it, you can also saw it on my picture, the picture where is an old woman with two sheep. She looks so sad. Maybe these two sheep are all her poverty. I don't know how to express the feeling when I saw it. Maybe it is called life. Sometimes people take immigrants as people using their country's resources, but in fact, they are "pushed by circumstances completely out of their control."
Istanbul can always bring me different surprise, no matter the intelligence and wealth shown in ancient Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia Church and Topkapi Palace, or the poor living conditions in the small town where seldom have much tourists are all make me respect the culture created by human beings. They are so vivid that telling everybody this is Istanbul, where the culture is walking with you.
#1. Staring through a shopwindow
This picture shows the shock coming from the culture of Istanbul by the power of camera. I am an outsider seeing so many amazing handmade work, and the aura of culture of Istanbul is delivering to me from the store through the shopwindow. Camera put all these work together and focus on the colorful plates, which presents a feeling that a guest is just staring at them outside the shop.
The second image is one that conveys for you a difference or otherness in the buildt environment or social spaces of Istanbul that in some way has surprised or shocked you. This image does not try to control the shock but instead to focus on it, to try to linger on this shock.
#2. Hi, who are you?
The buildings, and even the children are also the social environment of Istanbul. They treated us as outsiders, so they looked and followed us. On the other side, I was also aware of their differences: their living environment, their behaviors. My image just focus on this environmental differences.
The third image should be one that you think helps you convey the “limit” or the violene of the camera. That is, this image is one that is important to you because it somehow comments on the technology that you use to capture this image.
The limit of the camera is that you can never put the whole beautiful outside view and the inside view together. Window sometimes connects both of them, but sometimes it still separates them. Window also presents some kind of desire for outside world. I try to capture this feeling in my image and contrast the bright outside and dim inside environment, but there are still some limits.
The fourth image engages the politics of photography in the non-western world. Historically the camera has been seen as offering Westerners the truth of the Orient. The camera is used less as an apparatus of art than it has been used as an apparatus of scientific truth when picturing the non-west. To counter this it is important to think of images or shots that for you either undo the west/non-west binary in some way or that pushes the image away from being scientific document and toward being more of an artistic composition. As an artistic composition the image is valuable because it demands interpretation. Can you come up with an image in the city that for you is so complex that it demands interpretation?
I am always wondering: how can they put their cloths on that line. Just like I am always wondering: how can they build such an amazing city. The cloth, the sky, and the girl looking from the window are all show the complication of this old city. It's hard to interpret this image, but this may be just the truth of Orient. Orient never leaves people a sense of rich, developed, high-tech, and modern feeling, but people are still making their own lives using their intelligence and perspiration. Even the hanging cloth are not beautiful, that's the style of living.
The fifth picture should convey your struggle to capture deeply personal memory through an image. Is there an image that you have or could take that is meaningful to you because it evokes personal memory? How do you take that picture without loosing its quality as a memory?
Maybe because I come from an Asian country, Istanbul gives me so much deja vu(the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. From Wikipedia)
The sixth and seventh images are related to our three lectures by Jen, Orhan, and Didem. Can you take two pictures in the city/of the city that you think conveys or aids in conveying what you have taken away from these first three lectures. What in the lectures was most rich and meaningful to you. What was the take away for you? Power and inequality? Cities and their complex relation to nations? Modernity and its demand for homogeneous citizens? States and the way they hide their violence through what a citizen sees and remembers (ie, gentrification).
The trip in Istanbul gave me more than I expected. I was shocked by this old city every day and every time. I still remember the surprise showing on my face when I saw birds flying around the Galata Tower the night we just arrived. I asked others why this happened. They told me sometimes they can’t understand an ancient city. There are so many mysteries in such an old city. Especially, after the three lectures by Jen, Orhan, and Didem I was sure that every part of this city is worth to explore and think.
When we travelled with Orhan, I learned that culture is not still, but is walking as the time goes by. All the old buildings, the people living there are kinds of "preserve" of history and culture. Like Walter Benjamin said in “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”: "The uniqueness of the work of art is identical to its embeddedness in the context of tradition. Of course, this tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable." Like I showed in image #4, the style of people's living shows their identity of culture and tradition. Thus, when I was walking in Istanbul, the name of Pamuk's book--"Istanbul: memories and the city" was always coming up in my mind. No matter the children in the small town or the fancy buildings, such as Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace, everywhere is showing this ancient city's memories. However, when I walked in Hagia Sophia Church, I notice some carving characters on a wall of the church. I started to wonder how far can our memories go as the development of city. Istanbul is facing with the problem of attracting tourists to improving the economics and the preserving of old buildings. As this city developing, remembering and forgetting are always generate conflict problem. As the book The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey shows that, citizens of Turkey are trying to keep their memories and history, but on the other hand, the Turkish Republic is founded based forgetting. There are the conflicts, but they are also the elements that are pushing Turkey changing and developing.
The last picture shows the pictures about immigrants taken by the Immigrants Association for Social Cooperation & Culture. I remember in the reading “Guests And Aliens” Saskia Sassen said:
The last picture shows the pictures about immigrants taken by the Immigrants Association for Social Cooperation & Culture. I remember in the reading “Guests And Aliens” Saskia Sassen said:
Today immigrants appear as threatening outsiders, knocking at the gate, or crashing the gates, or sneaking through the gates into societies richer than those from which the immigrants came… But in fact they are partners…Refugees flows are also at the intersection of various processes. And for much of the twentieth century it has been recognized that refugees were unwilling departees, pushed by circumstances completely out of their control rather than by the desire for better opportunities in a rich country.
Istanbul can always bring me different surprise, no matter the intelligence and wealth shown in ancient Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia Church and Topkapi Palace, or the poor living conditions in the small town where seldom have much tourists are all make me respect the culture created by human beings. They are so vivid that telling everybody this is Istanbul, where the culture is walking with you.
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