Yeni Yol. A commission for the "Time in Turkey" book.

George Georgiou from Türkiye'de Zaman/Time in Turkey on Vimeo.


Last Summer I was commissioned by Zaman newspaper in Turkey to take part in a book project to celebrate their 25th year. They invited 25 photographers to spend a week photographing Turkey.
The whole project can be seen on the Zaman "Time in Turkey" page.

For this work, I chose the idea of following up on “Fault Lines” by making a road trip on the New Roads. The title in Turkish, “Yeni Yol,” has multiple meanings: New Way, New Aim or New Ideology. From my experience of Turkey, I use the New Roads as a metaphor of the change that is taking place and question what that vision is.

Screening of Georgia at Perpignan

Tonight I have a screening of "Georgia: In the shadow of the bear" at Perpignan. The selection and slideshow was made sometime before I completed the last part of the work by the people at Visa. When I got back from finishing the work I contacted Visa to see if they could replace some of the images with the newer ones. Not such a difficult task, but no it wasn't possible, the slideshow had been produced and that was that. So much for championing photojournalism and the integrity of the work and the author. I was going to pull the work but I wasn't the only one involved, I had to think of the position that would leave my French agency in, so left the decision to them.

Georgia June 2009

How to destroy an exhibition

Well I arrived in Athens on the 20th November, for 2 days of discussion around the notion of Mediterranean photography and portfolio reviews and a chance to see my exhibition at the

Artower Galleries in Central Athens.

After finishing my last portfolio review, a group of us went down to

the gallery to see my exhibition.

What followed was a series of disappointments, to put it politely. My initial impression, as I

 entered the Gallery was I didn't like the way it was ordered and spaced.

As I moved closer to the images, I noticed that there was some damage to the corners, they had clearly fallen from the wall. As I move round the exhibition, cursing very time I saw a damaged photograph,  I begin to look more closely at how they have hung them. It was a double sided tape that couldn't take the weight of 100x70cm photographs mounted on sintra board.

To finally top it all off I notice a small pin nail in one of the images, I re-looked at all the large images and in every image there were 2 nails hammered through the photographs, and not in the corners but half way down and sometimes 5cm into the images. It looks like the were trying to find areas in the image where the nails wouldn't be so visible.

I go back to Athens in 10 days time, it will be interesting to see how they managed to get them off the wall without completely destroying them.

 

New Belgrade