Special Feature

A little tour through the history of photography with Turkish Cypriot photographers

By Heidi Trautmann

I got my first camera when I was 12 years old, a box camera with a handle to turn to the next  position on the film roll, a longish film roll, with  paper around. I still have these first pictures in one of my first albums. How proud I was. Ümit Ali Esinler, one of the first elite photographers in Cyprus, had the same experience, he told me. He got his first camera from an English painter for whom he carried the painting equipment on his tours through the island. The first camera was for us a confirmation of finally having entered the adult world. You are now old enough to learn to use your eyes and to form your own views. This is most probably the most important statement on photography.

With your first camera you will start to take pictures of your friends, your family, your secret first love, but then you most probably will direct the lens of your camera on details, on portraits, insects, on single blossoms and you start to discover the peculiarity or beauty of it. A master in this field is Emel Erkan, famous for his beautiful and romantic nature photo studies.

Doing portraits you first have to get to know the person until finally your image of the person develops which very often is not appreciated by the person itself since he/she has a different understanding. It takes years to learn this. The human face, the human body, human behavior, social conflicts is a terrain so wide that professional or amateur photographers  concentrate on that for their entire life, out of own interest and curiosity or further use in art and/or business as a picture tells us more than words.  I remember those young days, the days as a student, 17 or 18 years old, with provocative books such as J.P.Sarte or André Gide under my arm, smoking Gaulloises and discussing God and the world with my friends, exploring such things as faces and everything that goes with humanity, exploring with the pen and with the camera. My father had given me his old Leica with which he worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa. I glued a strong reading glass to it to get the hairs in the nostrils clear and distinct. We were a group of young people discussing possibilities, and we preferred to work in black and white, we even developed our own photographs using an old bellows camera. I have seen similar cameras vamped up for macro-photography in the studio of many older photographers like Veli Kaymaklılı or in the home museum of Ersin Taşer who is a professional and most respected photographer in Cyprus with an immense archive.

Black and white photography using light and shade at its extremes holds a lot of charm and still excites me most. A good example is the often surrealistic art work by Dr. Lisani Otağ whose black and white photographic works are perfect and rich in contrast. He told me that he mostly uses just natural light sources, no spot lights. Another photographer I came across and who loves working in black and white is Giray Karahasan with his two exhibitions on erotic photography.  Very soft grey tones.

When I had a class reunion this year after 60 years one of my classmates remembered laughingly that I had brought to school a book with nude photographs from my father’s library. I was eight then. It must not have been an interest in photography then. And I remember the pain the teacher’s cane left in my palm.

Landscape photography depicting the most beautiful moments of a day, a season. There was an exhibition of Cypriot/American photography in 2006 displaying 172 photographic documents of the beauty, history, culture, people and physical features of Cyprus with many known photographers from both sides of the Green Line. In this respect I want to mention especially Rauf Denktaş who was a passionate photographer of Cypriot landscapes and other beauty.

Photography in journalism: A journalist gets close to world moving and shocking events and besides becoming air steward/ess or model, a journalist was the next most wanted profession for many young modern people. Through my interviews with photographers of North Cyprus I learnt that many had worked as journalists such as Ersin Taşer who on one occasion met with Nikita Krushov.  Or Kadır Kaba who lived and worked as journalist in London and roamed the streets for documentary photos with social structure.

But journalism does not hold only good sides to it when I come to think of war journalists. It needs a certain detachment to get through these experiences unharmed in soul and body. The photo of the young Vietnamese girl with her skin burnt off her naked body went around the world and got a high valued award. It does take some hard nerves to kneel down in front of a fleeing victim and shoot a photo. Journalism at its worst is reality photography racing after blood soaked stories, accidents, horrors and terror, or the so-called paparazzi chasing famous people. Shocking photos get better paid.  It reminds one of voyeurism.

I used to watch people reading their morning papers in the train or tram, at their office desk; their faces distorted in disgust or malicious pleasure, but comforting them for the day ahead to accept their destiny better. Voyeurism at its worst is pornographic photography and this dark area is bigger than we can possibly think.

I rather continue with food photography and advertising. That makes your mouth water. When you are feeling unhappy the best thing I can suggest is to leaf through a cook book with good photographs, your stomach will take over and lead you on rosier roads. Or I think of book illustrations and picture books I go through when I want to visit a country. Illustrations enter the human mind faster and easier.

As photographer in this field you need a good portion of philosophical and artistic training, the knowledge of colours and its effects on the human mind. Advertising photography to make people act, to respond to a certain project, either to make them buy something because it is supposed to make them happier, or to donate money for the third world with photos of poverty and human disaster.

Another technical photographic job is the one done by criminologists and court authorities to prove a person guilty or innocent. It requires high technical equipment and deep knowledge of it, to bring things to the surface the human eye cannot disclose. I remember Ümit Ali Esinler doing such jobs.

Architecture photography is another interesting field, not only for young architects to see what others are doing but to present an aesthetic view of modern architecture, to document the philosophy behind the structure and material used and establish an archive for cultural background documentation.  Emel Erkan is teaching architecture photography at a Canadian University.  

Not so long ago I visited the National Archive in Kyrenia and the director took me around the building where the important documents of the island’s cultural heritage are stored. I met Dr. Netice Yildiz, Art Historian and Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the Eastern Mediterranean University, and we talked about her latest project of doing archive work there in the Archive, also for analytical purposes and showed me photos of old Ottoman documents she has taken. What a great job and I do hope that one day we are going to see these beautifully painted documents in an exhibition.

I have kept one special field for the end of my collection of thoughts on photography, that is art photography and photography in art. It has become a most fascinating theme in modern art thinking, although already some time ago famous artists such as Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso have exclaimed: - Pablo Picasso: I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.; - Francis Bacon:  .. I have always been very interested in photography. I have looked at far more photographs than I have paintings. Because their reality is stronger than reality itself. John Steinbeck has said:...it does seem to me that it is proven beyond all doubt that the camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart...

That is so very true and not only valid for photography but for all tools in art. Art photography is to select, compose and execute a work corresponding to the aesthetic values of art in general and to manipulate the photograph for experimental presentation, either by chemical or physical media or tools or by digital process. All our local photographers have tried their hand in it after Kadir Kaba, who has studied photography in England, has promoted photography in North Cyprus and initiated new directions. Interest groups formed such as Afsad, Avant-Graph, and Cypriot Photographers’ Gallery, where artists and photographers assisted each other and organized exhibitions and annual competitions.  From some of these groups emerged some younger generation art photographers such as Özgül Ezgin, Mustafa Erkan und Giray Karahasan and many more.

Art installations using photographs; art projects questioning specific social problems or taboos represented through a daring and unusual approach. It is no longer the ‘catch the scene and press the button’ mentality, it has become a philosophically researched work. To use photographs in art is a completely legitimate process. Hikmet Uluçam, graphic designer, has first shown the possibilities with his graphic art exhibition in 1980 when the local art scene lifted its head and smelt a fresh wind blowing. That is recognizing the graphic element in nature, graphics created by wind and erosion; superimposing humans into images of nature, presenting a new interpretation. Going close to things using macro-photography and discover a most precious insight. Here one of them is Veli Kaymaklılı showing the structure of old wood boards, rust-stained metal, rubbish dumps with a single flower growing out of it. Morbidity.

Artist Günay Güzelgün who has discovered photography for herself and goes passionately after light and shade experiences; or Mehmet Uluhan who uses the abstract forms he  encounters in nature for his paintings, himself painter and photographer. A young artist, Rüya Reşat (who died so very young in 2011) who has studied art in France, made fascinating digital art, leading us into a new world of wonders.  I have spoken to artists of the older generation, Ayhan Menteş and Salih Oral who are fascinated by the digital processing and have created new images but still within their understanding of  art and they go on creating with a new feeling of freshness and curiosity. Art starts in the head and all tools are legitimate.  

Not to forget the collectors and non-professional hobby photographers. Nazif Bozatlı has the most interesting photo collection on local events, individuals, buildings and roads and he often provides his friends including myself with photos from his collection. There is a relative of mine, a hobby photographer and passionate traveler around the world: She has started a photo collection of anything pink, for example, a boat all in pink, a woman totally in pink….

The human being is a visually oriented creature and will always try to document its impressions - in earlier days by glyphs, scratching and paintings on the cave wall - and will recognize corresponding images made by others.

Postscriptum 1: The human being has five senses, thereof seeing, hearing and touching are all accepted in fine arts. I wonder when we will start including tasting and smelling.

Postscriptum 2: The photographers and artists mentioned within the text have been interviewed by me and are featured in my book “Art and Creativity in North Cyprus”; there are many other most astonishing art photographers in the scene but I don’t have their statements yet.