Caglar Tahiroglu is a photographer and a psychologist born in Istanbul, Turkey. She is currently living in Lyon, France. Her work is published in Thiaps Inlimited Grain Books and featured in Glossom.
I’m in Istanbul for about a month. I was born here and I left for France when I was 18. Now I am here to see family, friends and packing my stuff for my Asia trip. I like the diversity of Istanbul, every district is another world, it gives impression of travelling far away. It’s a crossing point between Europe and Orient.
A turkish breakfast : Black tea, different type of cheese, egg, village bread, salad, olives and fresh cream.
I also write but it is more for private uses, I don’t think to expose it. For me photography is about capturing an instant : It can be real sequence or a subconscious one. Manipulating the world, giving it a personal touch on my personal views. I always try to hint something underneath in my photography, an element confusing who may have several meanings to follow.
I don’t use any digital manipulation or digital cameras, they don’t really give ,just as you said, a textural organic touch to photos. I make double film exposures to put two images together.
My grandmother and my grandfather (anneanne and dede in turkish) were good role models to me when I was a child. They are in love since very young and even though I found them conservative and even repressive in my teenager years, when I arrived to adult age I found beauty in their life style and love they brought me. It was just a spontaneous project while my stay with them. This home inspires something about my personal history but my country’s also, about what has been conserved,what has been lost and what is so precious.
I really don’t know, my photos are like my children. 🙂 I would like to show this one because it reprents such a great feeling for me, a great spring with an idea of communion with nature , maybe losing yourself in it beyond any personal ego. Kinda found and lost feeling. I want to show also one of my Psyke series because I like the overall composition and the tenderness in it. I love water compositions , something very appealing about problematic of femininity.
Sometimes I think about a project a lot and sometimes there is an urge to photograph all spontaneously.
Original title was believing in ghosts. It sends to idealistic ideas that we believe and they never succeed in the real world. Black and white personage in this series comes from a state of no time, they belong to the past, refuse to disappear, don’t exist in the present either. Do we believe in this appearances? That can be love, attachment or political views.
I’m going on a big trip in Asia (Nepal, İndia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam), I think I will just wait for the ideas to show up!