ABOUT KAMİL FIRAT
For Kamil Fırat one of the most elite of the Turkish art of Photography, the way to identify, conceive, see and understand the world and to say something about it, is by means of photography. The Artist, whose art as photographs and prints take place in numerous international museums and private collections, overlooks the times we live in from a metaphoric perspective, with his series. He has been working on photography and art theories since 1980. He teaches Art Theories, Aesthetics, Visual Communication, Photography Phenomenology and Documentary Photography at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He opened exhibitions in Turkey and abroad. His works are in numerous museums and private collections. He is one of the founders of Adatepe Taş Mektep (Çanakkale). He is the curator of Bursa International Photography Festival from 2015.
BLUE ISTANBUL
The submarine bells are ringing for the ‘void’ touched upon by the minarets extending from the mist towards the sky. That void is where Istanbul was built…
Indeed... Istanbul is the shaping of this void that has surrounded it for thousands of years. From the architects of Hagia Sophia, İsidoros from Miletus and Anthemios from Tralleis, to the architect of the Sulaymaniyah Mosque, Sinan the Great, the people who built the city, in other words, shaped the void, turned it into the body of this city.
For this reason, Istanbul is a timeless city, which is always in touch distance but cannot be touched, it manages to escape when you think it is captured. It is a timeless city that is formed out of time-layers and that constantly flows.
You take a turn around a corner and you find yourself in three hundred years ago, you go up a ladder and live the present day. This city is a timeless city purely because it consists of corridors where different times intertwine.
This timelessness causes the city to be reborn every time the sun shows itself and thus to become a 'living city' that is rebuilt every single day.
Istanbul takes its color from the void that gives its shape and its color is undoubtedly blue…
ABOUT THE HORIZON
Being one of the most productive artists of Turkish photography, Fırat stretches towards the horizons with an entirely different frame in ‘About the Horizon’. The skyline at which he always looks from the same distance depicts the infinity, the distance to which it is impossible to get through, the nullity, the existence and so on. In his work in 2004, Fırat has experimented the circular frame in ‘the Dome’ for the first time. This was different from the commonly used frames. In his new exhibition, once again we look at Fırat’s photographs from within a circle. Thanks to his self-made camera, the artist has achieved the circular frame. That is to say that there is no involvement whatsoever in the photographs. The camera, which was designed in 2002, provides an 86 mm diameter image on a 4x5 inch film. Fırat gives insight to his tendency towards the circular form and says:
When I have first started to work on ‘the Dome’, I have realised that the matter of ‘recurrence’ that belongs to the East was highly important. The ‘recurrence’ is found in time, as well as in patterns and adornments… Hence, there should be no limits. Even though the circle is as well limited, its limits are not similar to those of a square form. That is to say, the matter of circularity was decisive. The horizon does not have limits either… Perhaps our eyes might limit the horizon, but we cannot actually talk about a limit to it. When I have brought this together with the time matter, once again the circle has emerged...
Everything is in this circle.
‘When I was designing the camera, I have started from a very trivial point regarding the photograph. All the lenses produce a circular image. I have come up with a design while pondering upon how to get the whole image produced by the lens.’
The photographs in the exhibition, alongside evoking eternity, make one feel as though one is watching, if not observing the horizon with binoculars. They also generate calmness, silence, emptiness and 'nothingness' ... Kamil Firat asserts that ‘everything that exists is in this circle’ and elucidates what he has found and seen in the 'horizon':
‘All those emptiness, fullness, existence and nonexistence, life and death, all of those actually find their representation in the skyline. In reality, therefore, everything about the world lies behind everything I have about the horizon. Though, everything about the world in this conceptual sense…’
STONE FACES
For Kamil Firat, one of the most elite of the Turkish art of Photography, the way to identify, conceive, see and understand the world and to say something about it, is by means of photography. The Artist, whose art as photographs and prints take place in numerous international museums and private collections, overlooks the times we live in from a metaphoric perspective, with these unique works.
Photography entails the matters of the real world. These matters don't consist of SINGULAR meanings only. They are related to lateral implications as well. The artist prefers that the viewer's perception may favor these lateral meanings. He wants the metaphor in the used material to be seen. This is why the viewer would think about it.
Stone Faces is the touch between the human body form and the LINE that's the product of culture, manufactured by men. These touches find form in these LINES : A "line" stretches with the weight of each form and transforms the yielding of the eternal to that of the limited. Thus, each limited "line" is now a 'linguil' (verbal) manifesto.
In Stone Faces, the second part of the tryptic (after "About the Horizon"), Kamil Firat has done some 'linear' process on the photographs that he took of antique statues. And in this process, instead of using straight, solid and clear 'lines' as shown in his previous works, he prefers bowed, irregular ones. The meanings we attribute to what we see is actually related to how we conceive them as their likeness in real life and how they are used. A bowed 'line', evokes a feeling of uncertainity as it reflects a change in direction but at the same time, is active. As opposed to a straight 'line' it is rather childish, pastoral, romantic, soft and organic.
The connotations that the observer attributes to these 'lines' are directly related to his life experiences.
Kamil Fırat, one of the most distinguished living Turkish photographers, is at Gallery G-art on March 10, 2009 with his new exhibition GÜNEBAKAN ART/A/KALAN...
We are faced with the beyond of the sunflowers, which is a very good metaphor, which we have not heard of, heard about, thought about, except perhaps its mythological story about his love for the sun. For these black and white and technically very satisfying photos; We feel like using humane adjectives such as thin, fragile, elegant, experienced, pure, lonely….The alienation method envisaged by conceptual art proposes to draw attention to ordinary objects and to see them in a different way. Sunflowers are right in front of us, leaving all their mediocrity out of the photo frame.The possibility of undisturbed material to go outside of itself and refer to something else is a gift of our imagination. Sunflowers are now freed from the obligation to represent what they belong to and leave their place to a form that everyone can fill according to their private life and consciousness.Kamil Fırat, who wants to see and show both the objects themselves and their inner dynamics, wants us to re-discover the hidden geometry that exists in nature, which is carefully hidden in the essence of things, with this exhibition.These photos are so powerful. It is as if they are a stand-alone light source from head to toe. From time to time, a fetish image emerged as everything other than itself was canceled and the whole clings to all its own parts and melts them within itself until they become invisible. Absolute self image…Our imagination has been attacked.
THE HORSES & CITIES
The Horses & Cities Exhibit, as the result of more than fifteen years of work, is comprised of a narrative and photographs of cities established by various civilizations in the Aegean and Mediterranean regions, as depicted through the testaments of horse symbols belonging to those cities, and can be viewed throughout the length of the exhibit.
Kamil Fırat, who followed traces of “Horse” images belonging to cities of civilizations from the Aegean and Mediterranean, successfully tells the stories of those cities, piecing together parts disconnected from one another, some of which are in museums, some stolen and stored in dark tunnels, in a comprehensive photo-narrative.
Kamil Fırat, who indicates that working on the “Horse”, which is common ground for all of the civilizations which have reigned in this region, is actually engaging in deliberation about the journey of civilization, and describes his approach in the following way: “The greatest witness of civilizations created by humans is also the “horse”.
Life has given it the task of “witnessing” what humans do. Sometimes as a huge and sometimes as a small statue of marble; sometimes as a terracotta figurine; sometimes as the relief on the surface of a sarcophagus; sometimes as the depiction on a façade, surrounding all sides of a temple; sometimes on currency; sometimes on an oil lamp; sometimes on a fresco; sometimes on a picture painted on a vase, and sometimes; as a genuine skull, horses have witnessed cities and people. Horses, which have served as witness to the human adventure of thousands of years, have been transformed by people into “works of art” carried through to today.”
Kamil Fırat believes that in the face of this “mass of civilization” which is Anatolia, each person who is awe-struck and influenced by it has much to benefit from it…In order to avoid being a partner in the effort to destroy this wealth, each person should do their share, should make an effort to do their share. He adds, “Those cities; a collection of places where belonging was felt passionately, and the most beautiful part; despite thousands of years having passed, the clues of that which amassed in the name of humanity, preserves its enchantment for “those who see, if they so desire,” in these cities which have been abandoned “unto themselves”. Even the slightest vestiges from those days contain knowledge within, but more importantly, convey the emotion of that day, to the current day…”
THE DOME
“Asılmış samanyolu ile kubbesi evrene
Seyredilir içinde dünya sanki aynadan bir top küresi”
Tezkiret-ül Bünyan
Although a great number of sacred monuments are only considered as such places that are isolated from the outer space; ‘the space’ that is designed and presented by Sinan in the Selimiye Mosque is not merely an haphazard space. ‘The space as a mass’ built by Sinan constitutes peculiar and unique examples, which highlights the thought of ‘unity’. These three buildings have inspired many people since the time of their origin. Sinan the Great has started his life as an architect by means of inspirations, and his work, along with the architect himself, was ultimately transformed into a source of inspiration, which rendered him to become known as a genius and obtain a special place in Art History in the world.
‘It’s dome attached to the universe by the Milky Way
From there the world is watched, as if a ball sphere made out of mirror’
Tezkiret-ül Bünyan
Sometimes a wind directs our gaze towards the welkin. The place in which the stars, the sun and the moon live on their evanescence, and which also turns the welkin into words. The cyclic space that absorbs, accommodates, encapsulates every bit of the body… The welkin; the place of light in which every single thing is as well the welkin itself, its transparency, permeability and most importantly, the welkin becoming its own self, which prevents us from seeing it. Such a welkin that accommodates what is cyclic is, in fact, circular… The circle in which we see ‘the time prior to myself, the time posterior to myself, and the time regarding my entity’. It is not the place of the time that flows from the past towards the future, it is the time that flows into all times in a rather scattered way: The circle... On the one hand corresponding to what is cyclic, on the other hand it is stable with its centralised structure and introverted nature… The fundamental equivalent of circularity in architecture can be found in the Dome. Such a magnitude of the space that embraces the aura in which the length, the height, the depth, and most importantly the time flows through every direction... In the Dome, its interior space expresses what surrounds it, namely, the depiction of the exterior… The Dome that is the representation of the wisdom and simplicity, the manifestation of what is external, which rises towards the welkin on top of the squares and its derivatives…
THE LEAF
Leaf plants are the main organs where photosynthesis, leaf ration and respiration take place. They are structures that come out of the nodes on the trunk and side branches and have limited growth.
1. “Falled leaves, broken vines / Nightingale's
branches are ravaged.” – Karacaoglan.
2.“At the entrance of the forest, bouquets of white acacia flowers mingle with the light green of the endlessly lobed leaves of the acacias. The petals on the branches give a depth to the vivid blue of the sky. Slowly,
Here and there they fall to the ground, covering the ruts on the road like snow.” -Hubert Reeves
3. “An infinite number of branches of leaves, branches surround and protect the trunk, the trunk the soil. Then people come and cut the trees and destroy the forests/life. When the last leaf disappears, the human will disappear too.”
-P.F.
4. “The first man was created and the feeling of shame was put into his subconscious. Man was ashamed of both the environment and himself. He covered his limbs, called shame, with leaves.” -E.R.
5. “When the last leaf disappears, with what will you cover your shame” -Street
6. “As the leaf covers the body, it shreds, and every body covered with a leaf becomes annihilation itself.” -K.F.
THE LEAF
Leaf plants are the main organs where photosynthesis, leaf ration and respiration take place. They are structures that come out of the nodes on the trunk and side branches and have limited growth.
1. “Falled leaves, broken vines / Nightingale's
branches are ravaged.” – Karacaoglan.
2.“At the entrance of the forest, bouquets of white acacia flowers mingle with the light green of the endlessly lobed leaves of the acacias. The petals on the branches give a depth to the vivid blue of the sky. Slowly,
Here and there they fall to the ground, covering the ruts on the road like snow.” -Hubert Reeves
3. “An infinite number of branches of leaves, branches surround and protect the trunk, the trunk the soil. Then people come and cut the trees and destroy the forests/life. When the last leaf disappears, the human will disappear too.”
-P.F.
4. “The first man was created and the feeling of shame was put into his subconscious. Man was ashamed of both the environment and himself. He covered his limbs, called shame, with leaves.” -E.R.
5. “When the last leaf disappears, with what will you cover your shame” -Street
6. “As the leaf covers the body, it shreds, and every body covered with a leaf becomes annihilation itself.” -K.F.
ROAD
Photography, since invented has become a powerful instrument not only for the manifestation of visual images but as a ‘language’ for communication between things, places and people. In this regard, Kamil Fırat (taking photographs since the 70’s) uses this ‘language’ in utmost plainness yet creativity when showing (revealing in a way) and relating his photographic tales to viewers while enabling the perception of the issues from his perspective and interpretation of the world around us. The cultural depth and sense of history in his works attribute to the display of certain individual and social moments and memories. We see striking examples of this in the 'ROAD' series, which will be exhibited for the first time on February 27 at G-art Gallery. The exhibition starts with black and white photographs which continues and ends with surprisingly innovative techniques such as layers of colorings thus showing a process of content and aesthetics. We’re eventually drawn into the realm of a certain cinematographic narrative in Kamil Fırat’s works.
The artist describes the ‘YOL’ / ‘ROAD’ series in his own words as follows:
The road is the gap in the middle of the "environment" that tells me about me, always reminds me of me, and allows me to come to terms with myself.
That's why the "road" is the biggest witness while wandering around.
That's why, for a very long time, "the road" has been a "history keeper" in dealing with modern times. While doing this, it may be a "black box" that will never be opened.
Quiet, unquestioning and uncalculated... Sometimes it shakes you so that you only hear what the "environment" say.
There is no such thing as “where the road leads”. There are only gaps in the environment.
And in fact, the increase of roads means the disappearance of the “environment”.
Therefore the road; It is falling in love with the one who destroys us.
This exhibition is the road's testimony to the "environment" that is gradually being taken away from us.
With this “environment” and “landscape” that the artist implies to, it allows us to produce new thoughts about our cultural concerns, political realities and social parables. After all, Kamil Fırat, who was born in these lands, has a soul shaped by the knowledge and culture of this land, is one of those who care about these lands and has something to say to make these lands more enjoyable, tells us these with photographs:
Do we worry enough about the “environment that has been taken away from us” to make the world better?