Istanbul Photography Festival and My Exhibition

An international photography festival is running on Istanbul and I invited to prepare an exhibition related with darkroom as a part of festival. One of the exhibition place was a ruined orphanage and festival committee offered a room in that building. After I saw the building I offered "My Childhood" project to be exhibit. I selected ten photographs from this project and printed them at darkroom.

Print details of all ten photographs:

Paper: Ilfrord Multigrade IV Fiber 1K Glossy

Paper Size: 30.5x40.6 cm (12x16in)

Image Size: 21.6x32.4 cm (8.5x12.75in)

Developer: Tetenal Eukobrom 1+9

Toner: Kodak Selenium Toner

We talked with Jason Eskenazi curator of the festival and decided to convert the exhibition place a kind of darkroom. So we placed developing trays on the floor of the room. Put the photographs in it and filled them with water. Durability of the darkroom paper in the water is not too long. Emulsion of the paper getting dissolve in the water after a time later. I wrote an e-mail about this topic to Ilford and they replied that the  fiber based paper are more durable than resign coated one but still fiber paper emulsion dissolves in 2-3 days depending on water quality and air condition. As indicated below artist statement we also wondered transformation of the paper as our memories or the condition of the exhibition building.

Here is the exhibition place (Photographed by Kemal Cengizkan):

 Here is the artist statement of the exhibition:

"We are shaped by our childhood. Our current traits are formed during this early period: character, mimics, emotions, reactions, expressions… Well then, how was my childhood? In this series, I searched the streets for the source of my expressions. What kind of child was I? How did I express myself? I went about wandering the streets with these questions in my mind and concentrated on the pure form of my childhood, discounting differences in gender, place or time. These photographs are the outcome of my search for traces of my childhood, which stretches back such a long time.

The exhibition, formed from this series, is a conceptual and collaborative presentation between photographer and curator. With the continued interest in analog photography in the digital age we wondered how a gelatin-silver print would metamorphosize in water during the exhibition period just as our memories change over time, as we become adults, or how this abandoned building has been transformed from an orphanage into a photographic exhibition space."

At fourth day of the exhibition emulsions were started to dissolve and at the fifth day all emulsions were dissolved. Some parts of the photographs floated, so emulsion of these parts didn't effect.

Here is the last situation of the photographs:

Lastly I want to share video record of the exhibition place.