Çerkes Karadağ - Photographer


	THEORETICAL BOOKS sözde FOTOGRAF SO-CALLED PHOTOGRAPHY Size: 13.5 X 19.5 cm Publisher: Imge Kitabevi Yayinlari Project Editor: Mehmet Göllü Cover Design by Elvan Özsezgin Cover Photography by Çerkes Karadag Çerkes Karadag Portrait by Erol Çinar Colour Separation: Çözüm Tanitim Printing and Cover: Pelin Ofset Tipo Matbaacilik First edition: Mai 2000, Ankara. ISBN 975-533-308-8 30 B&W photography, 264 page Printed in Turkey “From the so-called photography to the photography in fact...” No art branch has a chance to exist unless it has an infra-structure of idea. The thought dimension is an indisputable requirement in photography as it was in other branches of art. Certainly the power of photography has not arisen from its ability to delineate the reality as it was. Delineating reality is just one other purpose of photography, not its sole purpose of it has always been assumed to be. From this perspective, expressing an opinion over objects recorded on images for some reason has been stated as an indispensible work of photography. Since it was discovered, photography assumed the function of simplifying perception. This forced and undeserved role of photography has posed an obstacle for it to enhance its own artistic language. Photograpy is a kind of art which takes place both in the performing arts and any kind of art branch in which visual usage is required. In the field of photography in which anybody examines himself on making “art”, is no other than photography. As a matter of fact, photography has already deserved to be the “the most simple way” for people to express themselves and document their witnessing as a sideline to having a hobby. GÖRME KÜLTÜRÜ I CULTURE OF SEEING I Görüntüler Evreni/Universe of Images Size: 13.5 X 21.5 cm Publisher: Doruk Yayincilik Project Editor: Ijlal Kastal Design by Çerkes Karadag Cover Design by Kemal Çifçi Cover Photography by Çerkes Karadag Çerkes Karadag Portrait by Yilmaz Sönmez Colour separation: Çözüm Tanitim Printing: Pelin Ofset Tipo Matbaacilik First edition: January 2004, Ankara. ISBN 975-553-415-6 156 page, Printed in Turkey TITLES OF THE TEXTS -We can not escape images. -Presented image is a language. -Field of images is the field of quiteness. -The frame of the image is the frame of an idea. -Objects have more than what we see. -Every work of art is a beginning, not a consequence. -The photographer is the wanton child of the illuminated realm. -Color: The value borrowed from nature. -Optics: The mechanical eye of unreality. -The shutter release is the fait accompli item of photography. -The camera is a lie detector. -Photography reflects more than its subject. -Technical games turn the photographs into a puzzle. -When a spectator looks at an image, he looks for what he lost before. -Nature has no concept of value. -Photography is an art which serves reality. -The photograph is the reality between the past and the future. -The moment is speed rather than a period of time. -Photography is a time activity. -Thinking is an act. -Represented images form memory. -One can not search to find coincidences. -Every image is the equivalent of an experience. -Everything in the field of photography is on the move. -Art stands for itself, not for ethics. On photography, seeing and the culture of seeing I Photography is a time seeking process and it undertakes the responsibility of recording all motions of time. It also makes itself responsible for emerging the hidden realities inside time. The photographer makes the time in appearances, visible as interpreting the time in his own way of measuring. Presented image is not only a section of time; it also proves the existence of that section of time “formerly”. Photography is the interpretation of time and a set of symbols in image is the proof of this interpretation as well. It stops, freezes and re-objectifies the time. Photography both records and represents reality. However it never stops showing that it has no relation with reality. Photography has taken the reality as a basis for setting all its existence on it. In my opinion, betraying reality fits best photography most because the common purpose and task of all photographs is to freeze time. Photography records reality which stands in our point of view as well as all visual impressions of that reality in a flash and rapidly. In parallel with that it trains the eye behind the camera as well. Photography is a kind of art in which reality both exists and does not exist. Successful photographs should reflect reality without any need for pure reality, or should reflect anything with no aim of reflecting it. GÖRME KÜLTÜRÜ II CULTURE OF SEEING II Görüntü Büyücüsü/Image Magician Size: 13.5 X 21.5 cm Publisher: Doruk Yayincilik Project Editor: Iclal Kastal Design by Çerkes Karadag Cover Design by Kemal Çifçi Cover Photography by Çerkes Karadag Çerkes Karadag portrait by Yilmaz Sönmez Colour separation: Çözüm Tanitim Printing: Pelin Ofset Tipo Matbaacilik First edition: January 2004, Ankara. ISBN 975-553-416-4 147 page, Printed in Turkey TITLES OF THE TEXTS -Amateur: Defenceless realists -Photographing makes the reality enchanting. -The eye creates a verisimilitude of what it sees. -The eye both sees and observes. -Powerful photographs are equal in value to the earthquake they create. -The photographer’s success means he has mastered his art. -The role of photography lies in its alienation to reality. -Photographs are objects appealing to both the senses and emotions. -Photography technology has ensured the competence of the eye. -Privacy: Universal crime! -What we witness is the reality itself. -Identity is to be aware of who you are! -Culture resembles commercial shopping. -Universality has no norms! -All estimations are variable. -Edited, designed, fictionalized reality is misleading reality. -Photography in Commercials: The prestigious way of image despotism. -Press photographs are “oh-pressed” photographs! -The purpose of unreal images is to rape social memory. -Increasing the number of represented images is increasing the visual. -Photography: The spokesman of politics. On photography, seeing and the culture of seeing II The main purpose of photography may be defined by its revealing change. Like capturing the momentary reflections of life in change... Everyday we actually go right through the unavoidable continuity of change and infinite number of images symbolizing that continuity. Images tell what they symbolize. Photography makes reality unreliable due to the fact that they change reality and save those changes by converting them into permanent materials. Everything in photography is held as frozen like images because it never enables us to have the things which it is subject to, however it meets us with them. And speaking their objectivity is not possible. Photography is a new art which enables a mutual interaction with other tools of communication. Due to this feature of photography, it became an effective weapon which other branches of art should refer and utilize. Unfortunately, other branches of art suppose that benefiting from it greedily and ignoring the artistic aspect of photography is their acquired right. As a matter of fact, photography has never assumed to have a place amongst those branches of art, but it has always wished to be the voice of its own independency. GÖRME KÜLTÜRÜ III CULTURE OF SEEING III Fotografin Derin Anlami Deeper Meaning of Photography Size: 13.5 X 21.5 cm Publisher: Doruk Yayincilik Project Editor: Iclal Kastal Design by Çerkes Karadag Cover Design by Kemal Çifçi Cover Photography by Çerkes Karadag Çerkes Karadag portrait by Yilmaz Sönmez Colour separation: Çözüm Tanitim Printing: Pelin Ofset Tipo Matbaacilik First edition: January 2004, Ankara. ISBN 975-553-417-2 160 page, Printed in Turkey TITLES OF THE TEXTS -There is no photography unless there is some need. -The purpose of the way of seeing is the confirmation of seeing. -Every point of view is a personal contact made with reality. -Seeing is decomposing time. -Photography imprisons us into the framework of some meaning. -Arrangement is the registered identity of the photograph. -Every dream is empowered by another dream. -Photography is an activity which is under the control of feelings. -Every inspiration depends on an exaggeration. -Form: Parting the ways between reality and designed reality. -Content is related to the creation conditions of the work of the art. -Reality is unreal as long as it is designed. -Mystery is hidden in the visible things. -Philosophy of photography is not the way of explaining the photographs. -Aesthetics: Competence for having pleasure. -Beauty is violence. -Originality: discovering, renewing and objecting. -Creativity emerges as a result of a battle. -Art Photography: Forming the photography inside the art. -Criticism is making contribution to the existence of the work of art. -Portfolio: Indicator of the mastery of images -Each comment is a journey to the depth of feeling -We are the human beings together with the others -Model is the prototype of the work of art. -Faces are everybody. -Portrait reflects the photographer more than its model -Skin is a clothing! -Photography has made everybody narcissist. -Photography blesses the life as well as inquiring it. On photography, seeing and the culture of seeing III Interpreting photography by traditional seeing methods or aesthetic criteria of old ages, confronts it with some dogmatic and subjective comments in advance. In other words, it means associating the aesthetics with surrealistic opinions, mystical and metaphysical concepts. Whereas photography, is a kind of an art which is entirely and always built on the reality. And the notion of aesthetic reality fits exactly on that basis. The function of the philosophy of photography should be protecting the objects against the photographer, humans against the photographs, and the society against the misleading truth created by the images. Extensive usage of the images with the invisible pressure exerted on people is recently presented as if they were the indicators of development and civilization. Whereas that extensiveness is not progress as it was supposed to be, but the indicator of the individual’s astonishment against that image pollution. The fundamental function of the philosophy of photography is to constitute an independent judgment method which discards the photographer. So the purpose is to set forth a new language while the images taken as a basis, and also to move the visualized facts through an intellectual platform. ÖTEKI YÜZ THE OTHER FACE Portre Yazilari-Portre Fotograflari Portrait Writings-Portrait Photographs Publisher: Doruk Yayincilik Project Editor: Ijlal Kastal Design by Çerkes Karadag Cover Design by Kemal Çifçi Cover Photography by Yilmaz Sönmez Çerkes Karadag Portrait by Yilmaz Sönmez Colour separation: Çözüm Tanitim Printing: Pelin Ofset Tipo Matbaacilik First edition: January 2004, Ankara. ISBN 975-553-418-0 42 B&W photography, 205 page Printed in Turkey Footnote to the reader... The other’s existence is the other’s identity. Although the reality that we live and perceive makes us face others in the same conditions, it does not subject us with them to the same realities. Due to the alienation of one to the other, we actually look for our own face in the faces of others in an ever changing world. Because, despite all differences, we are hundred percent human beings. Analysing a face is getting lost in the roughness of it. It is somewhat sharing the power it symbolizes. Here are the other faces; one of us that I already knew and tried to write about... In other words, they are the faces of the world of science and art... Ahmed Arif Asaf Koçak Enver Gökçe FOTOGRAFÇIYLA DIYALOGLAR DIALOGUES WITH THE YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHER Size: 13.5 X 21.5 cm Publisher: Doruk Yayincilik Project Editor: Ijlal Kastal Design by Çerkes Karadag Cover Design by Kemal Çifçi Cover Photography by Çerkes Karadag Çerkes Karadag Portrait by Yilmaz Sönmez Colour separation: Çözüm Tanitim Printing: Pelin Ofset Tipo Matbaacilik First edition: January 2004, Ankara. ISBN 975-553-419-9 44 page, Printed in Turkey From the Dialogues... -If you do not look trough the camera with heart and soul, then you participate in veiling some evil! -Life has always guided photography, photography has been the mouthpiece of life… -An unsuccesful presented image fails to express what’s true and right. -As long as a photographer fails to communicate with the objects enticingly, he can not take photography further than a dreadful hobby. -Photography is a non-verbal wooing between the photographer and his subject. Translation by MELIKE GENCER Translation edited by YUSUF ERADAM