Public Story
The Last Year of Millennium
Summary
My goal and thought was only to show and that's it. I tried to look at what was happening impartially and away from any kind of bias. To go to places where people couldn't and to show things that had never happened before. My work is insignificant compared to the day and night efforts of health advocates. What I could do was to depict the bravery, selflessness and efforts of all people.
Those days, in the winter of 21 years old, we were sitting with photographer friends. The last semester of my undergraduate course was in Tabriz and I lived in a student house. There was a commotion, everyone was talking about China, about the virus that had shut down the whole city and their lives. One of my friends, who knew very well that I love photographing crisis and war, said sarcastically: "Metin, photographers from all over the world are going to China to work on this chaos of Corona." Although I was afraid and worried about this small virus, but I wanted with all my heart to have an opportunity to go to China, the birthplace of the world-killing virus, and take photos. But it didn't take long that instead of us going to China, Tawfiq was forced and he collapsed on us in Iran. My thesis topic was making a short film adaptation and I was looking for a topic to start working on. I was doing news work at that time.
From February 24, 2020, without the knowledge of my family and roommates, I started photographing the topic of Covid-19, from the night disinfection of the city and the public fleet. I thought to myself how a small virus has taken over the world in this last year of the dream millennium, which could be a call of a crisis or rather a world war.
Ten days after a lot of difficulty to obtain a photography permit from the hospital and emergency room, I finally managed to enter Imam Reza Hospital in Tabriz. It was as if the apocalypse had happened and everyone was looking to save his life. The nurses and medical staff were trying bravely and with great difficulty. But the war has a lot of dead and in this chaos, a lot of sick people died from this world in a cowardly and strange way.
From March 29, 2020, I started photographing Wadi Rahmat tomb in Tabriz. An important question that occupied people's minds in those days led me to the washrooms, Corona did not even leave the dead and no one knew how to wash and bury the dead. Wadi Rahmat in Tabriz was the first cemetery to bury the dead of Corona. Ghosal men and women washed at least 20 people every day. In the meantime, I myself got involved with this virus several times and spent hard and lonely days. The homelessness of the victims and their mourning families encouraged me to fulfill my mission to record these times in history and photograph and document these terrible events.
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