salt water

I first realized that the transparencies were lost when I needed them to use as an example for the colour correction and separation in one of my projects. They were the images taken mostly by my father during our summer vacations in my childhood when I was 4 to 15 years old.

At that time, a camera is something like an inaccessible and untouchable object where fathers had the only right to take the pictures and after one or two shots, the camera was encased carefully. And photographs were taken generally during the summer holidays -at least in Turkey- not like today, where every minute of life is recorded. I can clearly remember those days, after returning back from a vacation, how we excitedly wait the development and finishing of the transparencies which were sent to Agfa or Kodak. It took us a month or so to receive the processed slides and that day became somehow like a festival at home; all family gathered and to the accompaniment of a couple of glasses of tea and cake served by my mom, we all watch on the wall this images and live once again the time they were taken. All this process seemed to be a more or less magical from the eyes of a child.

So, to lose the transparencies is not only losing the transparencies, but in a way, losing some part of my childhood as well. So, I started this project; to capture my childhood memories of 1970’s with totally different people (who are not from my family), environment, atmosphere and different habits, behaviour and gestures of people of my today’s summer holidays. This project is not a big project with heroes in it, just a humble trial of catching my childhood. I try to structure the sequencing like a movie, by putting successive photographs as if I am lying on a sunbed and watching the environs, sometimes even getting bored when the holiday was extended.

I believe that it is not the environment, nor the people, but the feeling that I was looking after. The closest to that feeling, I felt that I found my childhood more.