Photography is an orgasm of the soul

2009-11-22T17:28:00.055-06:00

Previously you lived in Ankara where you were a well-known name in the field of photography. However, things really began happening fast after you settled down in Istanbul. Overnight Mehmet Turgut became the person that everyone was talking about, and people started walking around with your photographs in their hands. You came into our lives like a storm. With this sudden introduction, your innovative presenting personality has certainly played a great role. Was this situtation frightful for you? Or was this something you've been waiting to happen for a long time?

The thing that I'm most afraid of is to lead a double life. The people around me that are of high stature, soon after they have power or money in their hands they become different people. As a result, they lead a double life. This is what is frightening. I think that I am a person that's combined the life of my past, my present, and my future. Therefore, I don't feel that the fast rise that you've witnessed presents any danger. I've never denied my past, never will. Instead of living two short lives, I'm living one long life.

You've created a different style. Without hesitation, the boisterousness that's inside you and your soul is reflected onto your photographs.

Actually, I didn't do anything different. I did the same thing when I was in Ankara. There was a time when I went to Konya, and I did the same thing. I'm doing the same thing in Istanbul. I'm not claiming that I've created an art trend. I'm just not playing a role. I'm not trying to be someone else. I'm not copying any other photographer, any other painter, or any other artist. Maybe my brain works differently. It doesn't matter to me where I am, my mind is ready, at any moment, to take a photograph. In the middle of the night or at day break, if something is on my mind, I'll get out of bed, set up a crew, and by all means, I'll turn it into a photograph. The time, the place, it doesn't matter to me. They call this a source of inspiration, or it could be from the trauma that I experienced during my childhood, I don't know....

What kind of trauma?

A child is born, an exceptionally beautiful child. The baby of the family. The father and the mother are crazy about this child. But after the child reaches a certain age the attention that he received subsides. The result is a child that becomes isolated.

I think you're talking about adolescence.

Yes, after the age of 12, I became very isolated. In an instant they put up a distance between us. It was as if I became this grown man and the constant attention had to come to an end. After recieving so much attention, and then having a distance put between us, certainly the loneliness effected me very deeply. I spent a lot of time with friends of my family, and most of the things that I've learned wasn't from my family but from my environment.

Perhaps they wanted you to grow up faster than was neccessary. But as far as I understand, maybe your reaction is that you've tried to preserve your childish soul. Do you think this has caused a lack of satisfaction in yourself? Or in your art?

It's correct to say that I'm not really completely happy with anything. In fact, nothing I do is ever enough for me. I always want more. This is reflected in my art. I am only happy in the moment that I am taking a photograph. The next day I don't look at it with the same excitement. I become distant from the photograph. I am always after something more different, and even more original than before. Actually, if you have this dissatisfaction in your work, I don't believe it is a problem. If you are satisfied with everything, then it will bring on a lack of desire and boredom. And that will be what is reflected in your work.

Was your mother a housewife?

Yes, but as time passed she began taking photographs with my father.

Your father's actual career was a photographer.

Yes, he's never done any other kind of work. He was one of those well-known photographers in Ankara but life took him to other places. There were several important people, like the casino artists, Muazzez Abaci and Izzet Altinmese, that used to come to my father. In this culture he was a popular artist. The deterioration of urbanization and the decline in the quality of the people living there were some of the factors that changed the face of Ankara and the neighborhood in which we were living.

When your father took photographs were you with him? How much were you in the photographs?

My father's studio was inside the house, it was five floors. It's still in the same place. Photography was in our lives. When we weren't at home, we were at the office. We worked at my father's studio like it was a factory. I spent my childhood developing film in black rooms. I was always in the corner mesmerized. And, at the same time there was this lazy child, Mehmet. He was always escaping, in any case, school was a fiasco. I barely finished high school. On the other hand I was always darkening something out, nothing that child ever drew was normal. He always got a reaction, he was judged. My father never understood this. It was the strange bodies of women that I drew, with square bodies, women with four breasts.

Actually the fact that your father judged the pictures that you drew is interesting. In the end he's not just any person, he's a photographer.

My wife was an opera singer. Just because you deal with art doesn't make you an artist. I had the same problems with her.

Maybe she just didn't understand you. And you, were you able to understand her?

I understood my wife. She didn't understand me. If there was something she didn't understand it made her sad. Because I loved her enough not to make her sad, I seperated from her.

It seems to me that mentally you haven't really divorced from her yet. It's as if the work you do and every photograph you take is a message to her. Or it's like it has become a matter of proving something.

No, it's not about proving something, when we were together I took marginal photographs. The photographs weren't only for my wife. Men always do something for women. Women do things for other women. A man will never take his time to go out and try to make another man jealous. And I really don't care what other men do. Men love women. Every person has an ego. Because I have a big ego, I love to be loved. And I love to produce things. However, I wanted my wife to see the platform that I'm on now. She's in all the photographs that I take. Like you said before, it's not a matter of proving something or a matter of her seeing me, she doesn't want to see me. The thing you see is a connection. There will always be this deep connection.

In every artist there's the hidden potential for them to go crazy. A person that is happy and at peace with themself will not bother with art. Art is the work of complexed people.

In my opinion, this is one of the production channels. All of the things that cause you discomfort will eventually open a channel for you. Getting beat up is a channel, and even during childhood when you fall and scrape your knee, that can also be a channel.

You're an anxious, cautious person. For example, your always moving around. Even when you're sitting still your legs are uneasy...

Yes, I have this kind of uneasiness about me. One day something interesting happened. Once a week I went to a psychologistic. Every once in a while they'd watch a film or look at a photographer's work and analyze it. They took the work I'd done with ISFAK (Istanbul Photography & Cinema Amateurs Club) and brought it here. As they were looking at my photographs I asked them how they diagnosed me. They replied by saying that they weren't diagnosing me, they said they only wanted me meet me. One should always consider the possibility of being confused. But there's no such thing as art being produced from confusion or from unhappiness. When you look at it with that kind of logic, ridiculous or kitch things are what you'll end up with. That's my biggest fear, kitch.

The stories in your photographs are at the highest degree theatrical. And, you also participate in the stories that are inside your work.

Generally, I'm reflecting the state of my soul in the photographs. Of course I'm not talking about the fashion photographs. Sometimes you go inside for awhile and you just want to yell. If that scream is captured in the photograph then you are being heard by a larger mass. When you combine the scream in yourself with the scream of the person you are shooting it becomes an explosion. Only then can I relax for a bit. But I still haven't taken the photograph I want. The ones I am taking now are just a preparation.

How do you approach a person who wants you to take their photographs? Sometimes people may not be inclined to the extreme things that you offer.

If I really want, I spend time with that person, I teach them, I talk with them. Actually, I help them to face who they really are. For example, a fish unvoluntarily opens and closes its mouth to breath. They do that because it's an automatic reflex. "You are not this, be yourself," is what I tell them. It's actually kind of like therapy.

If the person whose photograph is taken is a women, she wants to look beautiful. In fact, more beautiful than she actually is! Sometimes you can make that person ugly. Let's talk about beauty and ugliness from an aesthetic point of view. For example, ugly can be aesthetic.

Beauty is different for each person. Is it correct to only connect art with beauty? I don't know. You can look at a woman who's laden with weight and the photograph that you take can be, at the highest level, aesthetic. You shoot something formal for her. Her pain, her explanation , the way her feet lay, from the back of her knee caps all the way to the way her arms lay, the color, the tone, that the subject that you want to reveal. When you bring all these things together, that is aesthetic.

Who do you think is beautiful?

I give a lot of importance to the meaning. There should always be character in the face, it should tell me something. I don't like soulless, expressionless beauty. So many beautiful women come to my studio for a photo shoot but most of them are completely empty. Sometimes there are these women who come with everything: intellect, soul, body. I can form a connection with them almost immediately. They understand what kind of photograph that you want to take, and during the photo shoot there becomes this connection. That connection has to exist. The person across from you has to believe you, and you have to believe in that person. It's like falling in love in thirty seconds. This work is like an orgasm of the soul.

Do you use photoshop?

When neccessary I use it. If I have that kind of option, why shouldn't I? What am I, stupid? It's always been there, why would I pretend that I discovered it? It's odd to me, to transform or assign certain things with the senses. For example, in an interview with another photographer and I, he said that when he looked into the lens of the camera that he seen the world differently, colors changed, it's like this and it's like that...was he was seeing hallucinations, I didn't understand. You only see that at which you are looking. If you attach a fish eye lens, you see the effect of a fish eye lens. If you attach a telescopic lens, it's like you are looking with a scope. I mean, my family has been taking photographs since 1919. In my opinion instead of chattering about it, we should just do our job. People don't see photoshop, computers, scanners, film, or negatives as tools. The camera is not one of my organs! When I touch it I don't feel anything. I use it as a tool. When you hang onto the phrases like photoshop, black and white, colored, this, or that you can't do anything. Whenever you put phrases like this to the side, it is then that you can do your work. You dump all the things that are in your brain into a photograph.

You have extremely hard photographs, but they don't contain grissly or violent content.

Yes, there may be blood but they weren't taken with a loveless attitude. If I've taken a photograph where blood is used it's not violence or hate, you see the blood that results from two people loving one another. There's always love involved. The love that's sensed in a photograph is the love that's sensed in people. I have some photo shoots that some may find extreme and some that are humorous. And it stems from this, it has to do with the frequency settings of my mood; mine are a little broader than most people. Because I live at the extremities I'm never at a place in the middle. When I'm really happy, the photographs are funny. When I'm unhappy I take hard photographs. When I am stuck in the middle, I feel as if I am nothing.

What are the things that make you uncomfortable?

Always feeling like I have to let go of being in control. Responsible for every step you take. I've always lived with this emotion. The rules of society, someone constantly putting pressure on me. If you're a free, independent person, you want to live without having to answer to anyone. You reject that pressure. I'm a rat that came out of a hole. The trees, roads, homes, everything in Ankara caused me pain. I needed to come to a city where I felt nothing. I came out of that hole. Without caring about anything I'm living the most joyful era in my life. The comfort that it gives is also a release.

There are some directors, even it it's just one frame, they are seen in the films they produce. You, on the other hand, use yourself as a model. Your own photographs are in circulation as much as the photographs that you have taken of others. Scarce nudity dominates the photographs. You have very few clothed photographs of yourself. Do you give a lot of importance to yourself? Exorbitant narcissism.

The man on the outside is so angry at the man on the inside, at least when he looks at himself in photographs he wants to look good, even if it is a little bit, he wants to look good. Ahahaha, It's a total lie! The guy's a narcissist, he loves who he is and the way he looks. He knows how to pose, how to look at the camera, how to stand in front of the camera. I mean, if you don't do this, how can you get anyone else to do it? I've analyazed something, here, I'll share it with you; Now, there are countless shadows of photographers out there that do not like me at all, right? But until now, I've never came across a female photographer that didn't love me. I could let this stand in my way, or I can take advantage of it. And I think if I weren't myself, that I wouldn't have loved myself.

Source: Karakalem Magazine, by Deniz Durukan, Fotoğraf bir ruh orgazmıdır

Istanbul Interview

Photography is an orgasm of the soul