Merih Akoğul’s photography exhibition titled “Thirty Birds” opens at PG Art Gallery on March 9, 2004, sponsored by Kodak. The exhibition, consisting of large-scale color photographs taken between 2001 and 2003, will remain on view until April 9.
All photographs are related to one another; regardless of their subjects, techniques, or forms, they will one day intersect in infinity. A studio portrait or an image of a city destroyed by war affects the surface of the film in the same “physical” way, and with each new reading, they refer from today’s two dimensions back to yesterday’s three. Yet every witnessed moment is unique, singular, and impossible to repeat.
Photographs replace memory when needed and help us recall the past. The photographer takes pictures in order to invite “others” to share the moments he encounters and that move him. Ultimately, the photograph becomes the name of the “aura” created collectively by the photographer and those who view it.
Photographer and viewers—whether they are called Phoenix, Anka, or Simurg… As we set out on a journey to find the photograph beyond Mount Qaf, passing through the valleys of photography and overcoming various stages, we come to realize that the “Thirty Birds” were in fact ourselves; we had been together from the very beginning, and in all the photographs we loved, we had been seeing ourselves as if looking into a mirror.