BLACK SALT WHITE TAR

About

Arjen Zwart and Peter Edel – two Dutch photographers living in Turkey

Arjen Zwart and Peter Edel have a lot in common. Both come from the Netherlands, live in Turkey and are photographers by profession. After they had met several years ago a plan gradually developed to show Turkey through different interpretations of photography with a joint exhibition. From an almost monochrome Istanbul portrayed by Arjen Zwart, to Turkish nature in all its colourful glory by Peter Edel.

ZIFT by Arjen Zwart

The series ‘ZIFT’ came about after Arjen noticed the black tarred facades in Istanbul during his walks through the city. These walls are tarred black in order to protect homes against the humid weather influences. Some of the walls are beautifully weathered, others are still freshly tarred and hermetically black. These photographs are shot from diverse perspectives and at different distances. In the abstracted photographs of this series the focus is on structure, shape and details.
Other pictures show the facades in the context of their environment. There are no people seen in the photos. Only through a heartfelt cry in a graffiti, a satellite dish, or an airconditioner, human presence is indicated. The book ‘ZIFT’ was published in 2011 with the financial support of AKZO NOBEL/ Marshall.

SALT LAKE by Peter Edel

While on a vacation three years ago, Peter Edel had his first experience with the Tuz Gölü, a protected area in Central Anatolia and with 1,500 square kilometres, one of the largest salt lakes in the world. He became fascinated with the monotonous emptiness, which he regarded as a metaphor for the lack of morality in politics. Last year, he returned to Tuz Gölü for an intense working period, during which he felt inspired by the work of the color field painter Barnett Newman. The minimalist division of the surface and Newman’s fascination with empty, boundless landscapes that enhances the awareness of individual presence within them, became an important principle for Peter during his time at the Tuz Gölü. Apart from this, the Tuz Gölü refers to the tradition of the horizon in Dutch art; from Salomon van Ruysdael, to Ger van Elk.