40 Stations

About

40 Stations is a unique photographic project by Turkish photographer Muammer Yanmaz. The exhibition focuses on immigration and the changing nature of international borders. Yanmaz follows his previous 40 Stations exhibitions in Paris and New York by photographing 40 Turkish migrants in tube stations of their choice in London. To complement this exhibition British photographer Annabel Elston has been commissioned to create a series in response photographing 40 prominent members of the British community in Turkey. The two projects will be shown in the UK for the first time. 40 Stations explores identity, migration, and the personal links which connect the UK and Turkey. Yanmaz works with themes related to urban portraiture documents the familiar faces of daily life. Yanmaz's black and white photos emphasize the architectural context of London's tube stations to suggest the idea of transit and change. Annabel Elston has photographed 40 British ex-patriots in Turkey. Although Elston's subject matter is similar in content to Yanmaz's, their photographs appear strikingly different. Elston's colour photographs focus on the individual, the features of the tube station being used as a prop. Accompanying each photograph is a short text in the subject's own words about their relationship to their adopted country. The series has been shown at Mavi Jeans Art Gallery/à„°stanbul, Marmara Manhattan Art Gallery/New York, French Cultural Center/à„°stanbul, Bureau de la Culture et de l'Information de Turquie/Paris and will now be presented at SantralIstanbul. After showing at SPACE the project will tour Turkey before continuing to tour other cities including Tokyo and Berlin. The final work will be an amalgamation of photos from all the cities which have hosted 40 Stations exhibitions to form a socio-photographic document. The photographs will be presented in an album also containing each subject's life stories taken from their interviews.