Meet a 21 year old, who says photography is not something he likes to do by calling it an activity, for Barbos its more about the frame and the intriguing thought process behind each and every picture. Being a student of Cinema in a renowned university, Barbaros’s knowledge on art and beyond is fascinating and makes us go in awe. His intelligent answers are in a way true reflections of his work. His pictures have a trueness and soul within, as he himself describes them to be very depressing and unhappy forms.
Let us hear more from the artist himself.
How did you choose photography?
It wasn’t something that I chose. In-fact, It has never been. Photography isn’t something which I enjoyto do as an activity. What that frame tells is more important than the photography itself for me. Existence of the human race has always been a threat for the universe and it has gone worse. There are many topics which can be created about humans. It is an unending process of production. Evil things trigger my production. As I mentioned before, the photography isn’t something that I choose, I’m a student of department of the cinema in the University and again, I’m interested with video and installation. I’m 21 years old at the moment, when you look at me from the outside, yeah, I seem focused on the Photography but with time there will be #productions# of me on the other branches of art.
For Barbos what is art and fine art photography?
This one is a very hard question. I thought about it sometime but I discovered that it is unwarranted to think about. But I know one thing very well that the art can’t be defined as a singular concept. To understand art and make practice of it, one should brainstorm about the essence of life. Otherwise, your productions will be seem as some thing aesthetic, nothing more. It will be wrong to call it as “art” while an artistic product has just aesthetic values. Clouds are also aesthetic too, but they’re just clouds. Art brings bad responsibilities which you have to endure in your life with itself.
Creating productions with knowing those bad responsibilities will make us a virtuous person and will trigger us in an emotional way. In my country (Turkey) there is a mentality who doesn’t want to understand it. Turkey is going through a difficult time. We have been being ruled by a dictator for years. Although it may seem lost its dynamism, process continues, “Gezi Parkı” incidents which started at the month of May, in İstanbul, Taksim, spread all over the country. Many people died, many people injured. There is a powerful uprising against the government at the moment. For example, them asses and communities are gathered, turning streets and stairs into a colorful paintings so to speak.
How do you perceive a picture and what makes it worth for you to shoot?
Humans carrying away itself completely synthetic, inorganic life, forgetting its nature and its organic structure is a situation that completely turns me crazy. We are very intelligent beings, things which system thinks and presents it in his opinion as proper, we can’t see the life which system imprisoned it in its own labyrinth. I fight with it in some of my works and in some of them I avoid doing that acting cowardly, but the thing I do in most of my works is staying in a fix. It’s an existential process. An elusiveness and desperation dominates. Most of my works are unhappy or depressed.
That’s why they’re realistic.
Your Inspiration?
The Poetry, Literature, Cinema are the things that inspires me very much. But they can’t form my productions essence and subtext. Every thing happens on around us is my source of inspiration. Dialogues of humans with each other, their lives in home where they isolated themselves, the clothes they wear, accessories, the topics of their conversations.
Any final thoughts or advice for our readers?
In your productions, If you share something emotional from yourself, always follow that way. The things which value your productions are your emotions.
You can find Barbaros Cangürgel on the Web :
Copyrights:
All the pictures in this post are copyrighted to Barbaros Cangürgel. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.
