I stated taking the first photographs of the bay closest to my house, on the Yeşilköy coast, in 2002. From 2005 on, this Coast project expanded to include, for the first time, other places along the sea shore as well. This also coincided with the time I began to avoid taking stuational photographs. Thus, the Coast project evolved into the depiction of a placeless and somewhat timeless, metaphorical coast of existence rather than any sea coast. The photographs target the most primary forms of being, the gift of life at birth, the destructive reality of death, fear, affection, love; in short they explore all the contradictions of the human soul moving back and fort between the lightness and haviness of existence. Sexuality is present in all the images and love emerges as the single gentle aspect in the familiar clash of the sexes.
The existential themes that dominate this work are probably also rooted in a fascination with novels that goes back to my childhood. In my eyes, photography is as close to litarature as it is removed from painting. In these photographs of the coast, the selected backdrop provides an adequate setting to examine the soul's most basic, animal-like, and naturel states of being; the sea that I love so much, the green parks, the walls and bedrooms that hold little reference to a specific time period.. The basic, spare presence of the background also dictates the direction of the coast pictures.
This becomes clearer as the number of photographs increases because all the images in Coast shun the dullness of uniformity and seek pluarity of expression. At times they even seem to take on a life of their own and burst forth like individual beings flaunting all life's idiosyncraises.
The selection here consists of photographs from the Coast taken between 2004 and 2007. With this very small selection, I have tried to reveal some of the coast's essence. The paradox between dreadful reality of death and the painfull vulnerability of birth constitutes backbone of the collection. In addition, thereis the lone windswept tree rising up from waste and rubbish, flies buzzing around the park, men wrestling while a woman watches, and the sea awash in algae, which, on the one hand, I identify with the death of humankind and nature, and on the other see as a reference to the polluted masculine world.
Silva Bingaz, lstanbul Modern “Uncanny Encounters” August 2011