It has been exactly 170 years since the official announcement of the invention of photography. Today, circulating across many different fields — from science to espionage, from photojournalism to advertising, from documentation to art — photography has become the most influential visual medium in the world and an inseparable part of our lives.
Embracing the ordinary details of everyday life, photography has developed its own sublanguage within this visual realm that oscillates between memory and art. The rapid flow of time has also shaped the backbone of the way we read and interpret photographs.
Today, there is neither an unwritten poem nor an unshot photograph left on earth. Even though each photograph is captured at a different moment and under different conditions, they inevitably repeat one another. Yet every photographer carries their own perspective into their images.
It is precisely this unity formed through variations in interpretation that resembles a jazz repertoire composed of pieces known as “standards,” performed by different musicians in their own ways. With their simplicity, clarity, melodic structure, and memorability, jazz standards have become indispensable works in concerts and albums.
The titles of the photographs in the exhibition are paired with the names of well-known jazz standards (such as “If I Should Lose You,” “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “Nature Boy,” “Time After Time,” and “Everything Happens to Me”). These pieces, performed and recorded thousands of times by different ensembles, will be played on CD throughout the exhibition, and at the opening there will be a live performance by jazz saxophonist Yahya Dai, who will perform jazz standards.
Emerging from the attitudes adopted in response to lived moments or encountered objects, the exhibition photographs aim to build a bridge — through ordinary moments — between modern and postmodern, major and minor, East and West, painting and photography.
Having previously brought Merih Akoğul together with audiences through the exhibitions “Otuz Kuş” (2004) and “Bit-ki” (2006), Pg Art Gallery continues in recent years to focus on photography exhibitions in order to reach wider audiences with the art of photography.
