The Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED), which was founded in 2005 to develop and facilitate research projects dedicated to the history, art, architecture and archaeology of civilizations in Turkey, has organized many diverse exhibitions at its venue in the historic Merkez Han on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street since 2012. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its exhibitions, the center launched a new photography show featuring the work of artists Bruno Vandermeulen and Danny Veys on Feb. 24. "Intersecting Past and Present: A Photographic Exploration" will remain open at the ANAMED Gallery in Istanbul until Oct. 17.
In the exhibition, conducted with the support of the support with Vehbi Koç Foundation, Yapı Kredi Publications, KU Leuven, LUCA School of Arts and the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project, Vandermeulen and Veys focus on the ancient region of Pisidia, which includes the provinces now known as Isparta, Burdur and Antalya. The works of the show, based on the concurrently published photobook "The Tortoise Arrived Alone One Day," was shaped around the work displayed at the center’s "(in)site Sagalassos The Archaeology of Excavation Photography."
The exhibition comprises photographs created by Vandermeulen and Veys on black and white film as a reference to the past and as an homage to early photographers with a large-format analog camera, as well as 19th-century photographs and albums from the Ömer M. Koç Collection. While Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project Director Jeroen Poblome sets the historical framework with his texts for the show, Meşher Gallery Director Bahattin Öztuncay helps place the photographs in the exhibition in the context of the show with his explanations about the experimental shooting and printing techniques used by the artists.
Can a landscape bear witness to a distant past? How does this relate to today? One of the main themes in contemporary photography is the "man-altered landscape," where the transformation of the landscape through urban expansion is documented. In this sense, working with the concept of "history-altered landscapes" for "Intersecting Past and Present: A Photographic Exploration," Vandermeulen and Veys study the historical layers of a landscape and the influence of temporal continuity on spatial dispersion. In their work continuing since 2008, they approach the landscape, which, shaped by both millennia of geological processes and centuries of human intervention, as a medium of exchange between the now and the then, and their photographs explore the line between absence and presence. The works reveal that humans interact with the landscape, carving roads, building settlements and cities, blending constructions within the landscape and exploiting the topography to their advantage. Settlements may even grow into cities; cities may crumble into ruins and disappear under layers of dust.
Among the techniques used by the artists are vintage processes such as albumen, salt prints and classic gelatin silver fiber-based prints, but also silkscreen prints, UV prints and photopolymer prints. To explore the photographers’ perspective on the “history-altered landscape” around the Pisidia region, where they went and slowed down the process of image taking into image-making to discover a right point of view as if they were tortoises discovering the land, you can visit "Intersecting Past and Present: A Photographic Exploration," combining history, archaeology, nature and topography, at ANAMED.
