SALT WATER, 2019
I first realized that the slides (transparencies, dia positives) were lost when I needed them to use as a master copy for the color correction and separation in one of my projects. They were the images taken mostly by my father during our summer vacations in my childhood.
They were and as far as I know should be, in their usual place; in the famous hard-surfaced black briefcase. When you live with an object (which you do not use very frequently) for a long time, it becomes inured and the place where you usually put it, starts to be taken as granted. They should be lost like that, most probably, in our latest move of our apartment. I am a very disciplined, careful and tidy -may be in a level of obsessive compulsive disorder- and usually I do not lose anything.
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However, the reality is: they were gone; most of them are about my childhood; aged between 3-4 years and 15 years old. At that time, a camera is something like an inaccessible and untouchable object where fathers had the only right to take pictures and after one or two shots, the camera was encased carefully. And photographs were taken generally during the summer holidays -at least in Turkey not like today, where every minute of life is recorded.
I can clearly remember those days, after returning back from a vacation, how we excitedly wait the photofinishing of the transparencies which were sent to Agfa or Kodak (Germany). It took us a month or so to receive the processed slides and that day became somehow like a festival at home; all family gathered and to the accompaniment of a couple of glasses of tea and cake service of mom, we all watch on the wall this images and live once again the time they were taken. All this process seemed to be a more or less holy thing from the eyes of a child. So, it’s not only losing the transparency but my childhood as well. Or, at least, I feel it like that.
So, I started this project (which took 5-6 years); to capture my childhood memories of 1970s with totally different people (who are not from my family) and a different environment of my today’s summer holidays -together with the help of colour separation during the digital process of the images-, I try to catch the same feeling.
The closest to that feeling, I felt that I found my childhood more.
- Bahadır Aksan
