A Child's World

PHOTOGRAPH

| A Child’s World | ISBN: 9799759893-37-7 | Fotoğrafevi Publications-2005 | Dimension, 21 cm x 21 cm | Page, 70 | Text, Ara Güler, Erdal Yazıcı, Hasan Şenyüksel | Desing, Aura Ajans | Photograph, Erdal Yazıcı | English Translation, Lucy Wood | Paper, glossy 200 gr |

A CHILD’S WORLD

A child’s world in a thousand guises.. Doleful eyes, eyes full of love; heartening, invigorating stares.. On the street, at school, in villages, mountain pastures, at work.. Spontaneous, fragile, guileless and unsullied.. Children in a huge colourful world of their own, stepping out of images to eye us.. We meet them face to face in the pages of books, at exhibitions.. Children protected and loved; children put upon and dictated to. Children idolised and thrown out of home; children, who are good-natured and principled, ill-tempered and naughty, successful or unsuccessful, glue-sniffing, promising, gifted.. Children deprived of their childhood, condemned to a formative life of penury with no toys. Children sexually abused; girls venturing into motherhood as children. Children, who make up almost a third, if not a half of the community in many countries.. Children swallowed by tidal waves and floods, crushed by wars and earthquakes. Happy is the child eating ice cream on his father’s shoulders by the sea. But what of his cousin eyeing us despondently outside a tent? One child basks in his grandmother’s attention; another labours slavishly at the coppersmith’s; another lives in a fairytale world in the mountain pastures with his toys and cat.. There are children tethered with rope for fear they may stray onto the street; children who sketch their dreams at school – dreams that ought to represent the real world; children packed into motorcycle sidecars down at the shops, the market; children at the waterhole, who chase for hours after fleeing livestock under the scorching summer sun.. 

In the course of taking these photographs, I experienced some memorable moments with children in Turkey’s larger cities as well as a host of small towns, villages and the countryside. I became one of them, which meant literally re-living my childhood. I became their friend, rather than the person who was taking their photographs. The images that resulted are an ‘illustration’ of the times we had together. As a photographer, I am also present in the images. We exchanged candid, selfless, affectionate looks. We talked and had heart-to-hearts for hours on end. I found out everything there was to find out straight from the children. I learned about their alternately happy and unhappy lives, their achievements and failures, what they were good at, the gliding bird, the mountain wolves, trees, flowers, bees and butterflies. I listened as they told epic tales of past events. Somehow, they had managed to squeeze giant worlds into their tiny bodies. And through these photographs, they opened a window on their various worlds, immortalising them in a ‘black box’.

‘A Child’s World’ tells their individual life stories. The story of young lives unfolding in our midst every day: some loved, embraced and praised to the skies, others despised and alienated; some well fed, others undernourished; some well educated, others not.. Children: our future, our hope..

I think of the world of children as a meadow of flowers that needs nurturing with love, protecting.. ‘A Child’s World’ is a modest gift to my friends, who make up a small part of this fragrant fabric and carry around such huge worlds in their tiny frames..

Erdal Yazıcı

19 March 2005, Istanbul

IN DEFIANCE OF DUST AND DEBRIS…

The ground was shaking: vast machines of metal that moved were heaving backwards and forwards, suggesting 20^th century monsters.. Reversing, they squeaked loudly; moving forwards, they shoved at the buildings with their giant raised scoops, shattering walls. The place resembled hell. Dust and debris filled the air so densely as to create a blackout. Istanbul was being demolished. It was here, in these surroundings, that I ran into Erdal Yazıcı. He emerged from the clouds of dust and came over to say ‘hello’. I returned the greeting. We were the only two people on site besides the workers. Two photographers clutching cameras…

 Although he knew me, it was the first time I had come across him. He came to my office to interview me afterwards. Subsequently, I often kept up with his photo-reportages in newspapers and magazines. I also went to some of his exhibitions. And now, I am writing the foreword to his book, ‘A Child’s World’. It is my conviction that Erdal Yazıcı is a man of photographs who has found the right road. He understands what he sees, senses the joy and drama before him, freezes the moment and somehow immortalises it. He has done so consistently to date and continues his search for the truth. He knows that photographs are the product not of momentary enthusiasm, but of a lifetime of accumulated experience.

Now, I see him as one of those rare people who observe their surroundings assiduously through photographs, their feet placed firmly on the ground. The road he is on is the right one. His destination is the vast and infinite horizon.

I wish him a good journey.

Ara Güler

Galatasaray, March 2005

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