CHAPTER I
LIFE AND DEATH WALK SIDE BY SIDE
Turkey, 2023
On February 6, 2023, two strong earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 occurred in Turkey. The disaster claimed more than 50 thousand lives.
I arrived at the epicenter of the earthquake, the city of Antakya on the same day and began to document the events. The place turned into a ghost, the air was a haze of dust from collapsed buildings, I heard screams.
I witnessed how a father pulled the body of his five-year-old son out of the rubble with his own hands. Later on I saw how small team of rescuers saved a young man who been lying under cold concrete without water for 150 hours.
In such situations, life and death walk side by side, people show their best and worst qualities, all the feelings are sharpened. This horror displays not only the fragility of a human being in the hands of nature, but also the power of their will and desire to survive.
CHAPTER II
FAMILY ALBUM
Turkey, 2023
On February 6, 2023, two strong earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 occurred in Turkey. The disaster claimed more than 50 thousand lives.
On February 8, whilst documenting the work of the rescuers on the rubbles I discovered a family picture. It was lying on the road, covered in dust. The image displayed a mother and a child hugging each other. I did not know those people but the find really touched me. That day I left the photograph where I found it.
A week later I witnessed how excavator destroyed family albums whilst clearing the rubbles. It was when I decided that I had to save at least some of these photographs and started collecting them. As a result I have had a dozen of scratched and burned images of the unknown victims of the tragedy - metaphors of the suffering of the entire Turkish nation.
When I got back home I carefully wrapped up the photos in the traditional Turkish fabric and rephotographed them. I tried to be as gentle as possible with these memories which shouted about the fragility of a human being's life in the hands of the powerful and unpredictable nature. Patterns on the fabric complemented the burnt and destroyed parts of the images, thus suggesting that any trauma can be healed. And this will definitely happen with Turkey, after a while.