The Object That Wears the Gaze

Photography takes shape in my life as an experience of grasping, transforming, expanding outward, or withdrawing inward through the camera, which has become an extension of my body in the context of my passionate relationship with seeing.

It has been approximately 10 months since I opened my solo exhibition in Istanbul this past January. During this time, I’ve been reflecting on the exhibition and the spatial ideas I developed within it.

As part of both my artistic and daily practice, I take long walks. I collect objects I encounter on the streets and reflect on them. This creates an exciting framework for me to understand the position and condition of these objects in a sociological context. What can a lone iron standing in the middle of the street tell you? Is its freedom to exist there determined by someone’s need? What does it signify when it’s in my bedroom at home? And what will I think when I see it in my kitchen? I approach each object I encounter as a trigger, creating a new space for thought. Through the lens of object-oriented ontology, I take endless pleasure in deeply exploring the fundamental relationships between one object and another. As I develop my ideas about objects, I also realize that photography has more potential than simply capturing an object in an image. For me, photography can become its own object.

The central theme of my solo exhibition explores the new dimensions of photography, structured by the convergence of our daily experiences, subjective geographies, and the intrinsic perspectives those experiences carry. In Istanbul, I encountered metal trapezoidal construction panels - objects that have unwittingly become new forms of urban furniture.

These materials, which serve as makeshift billboards covered with exhibition announcements, concert posters, or advertisements, also act as barriers - blocking views of ongoing construction while protecting what’s inside. By combining the structure of this vision-obscuring material with the act of seeing in photography, I created new surfaces that evade perception. While considering the retinal nature of photography, I also thought about how the heat emitted by the colors on my photographic surfaces could be converted into frequencies and made audible. I sought to create a new object from the existing surface by uncovering the sounds embedded in photography’s static structure. When I look back on my exhibition, I feel it approached the idea of a living video, where sound and image merged into the space. The exhibition, titled “Extimacy”, drew its movement from the viewers' reflexes - listening to sounds and observing images - opening a space for ontological discussion on the reality of contemporary photography.

You can discover these frequencies on my website.

Berk Kır is part of Münchner Kammerspiele X Der Greif: “Off to Elsewhere”.

Check out his Artist Feature You Have a Place Above My Head.