Koray Degirmenci

'The scenes here were taken in two abandoned factories in Turkey. Photographing modern ruins preoccupied me with the search for that unique photographic thing through my own desperate awareness of its death. Why, I asked myself, was I constantly in need of waiting for the presence of the unique being in abandoned places? I was sure an interstitial space existed to legitimize my longing for the unique presence of things, and to render my photographs (and the act of photographing) meaningful. As I walked among the ruins, I wondered why my longing and obsession for the “persistent presence” of the photographic things is sated when I photograph abandoned places. I was following the impersonal and the universal through these spaces; the buildings and things within them are so decontextualized, so isolated. In the absence of significance and a relational aspect—namely, function—they have direct presence. They are absurd in the literal sense of the word; their emptiness, while providing a presence untrammelled by other occupation or purpose, denies any rationality. Empty buildings have no reason for being. However, they also resist language to frame them, including photographic framing. I believe photography’s so-called objectivity does not operate within a representational sphere; rather, it gains the power of illusory objectification (or impersonification) outside the realm of representation. The medium of photography betrays its own language, creating a black hole while imploding; it makes its subject much more significant than itself; it wraps the “thing” up in impersonality and renders it universal. Even more, paradoxically I can now believe in the very idea of authenticity, by capturing the thing in the middle, between absence and presence. If melancholy is intimate and personal, nostalgia is porous, even transparent. Photography, in the age of photography after photography (so-called digital revolution), is more nostalgic than ever.' 

Koray Değirmenci is Associate Professor of Sociology at Erciyes University in Turkey. His most recent work includes articles published in journals, such as International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Turkish Studies, and in an edited book, The Aesthetic Dimension of Visual Culture. He has been into photography for over 15 years.

Selected by Emma Morris, Photoworks