Intersecting Past and Present: A Photographic Exploration

About

Artists: Bruno Vandermeulen, Danny Veys
Research Advisors: Bahattin Öztuncay, Jeroen Poblome
Curation and Graphic Design: Naz Uğurlu

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. Thus, working with the concept of “history-altered landscapes” allows Vandermeulen and Veys to study the historical layers of a landscape and the influence of temporal succession on spatial dispersion. In their work continuing since 2008, the landscape acts as a medium of exchange between the now and the then, shaped by both millennia of geological processes and centuries of human intervention, with photography exploring the line between absence and presence. Humans interact with the landscape, carving roads, building settlements and cities, blending constructions within the landscape, and exploiting the topography to their advantage. Settlements can grow into cities; cities can crumble into ruins and disappear under layers of dust. 

As a reference to the past and as an homage to early photographers, artists Vandermeulen and Veys create their work with the help of a large-format analog field camera on black and white film. They deliberately slow down the process of image taking into image making. As such, it allows the photographers to work and communicate with their subjects, going to specific locations in search of the right vantage point, slowly, as if they were “tortoises discovering the land.”   

Techniques include vintage processes such as albumen, salt prints, and classic gelatin silver fiber-based prints, but also silkscreen prints, UV prints, and photo polymer prints. The exhibition, a selection of this new body of work, including unique and hand-made items, along with historical prints of early 19th century photographs and albums from the Ömer M. Koç Collection. Starting with Bahattin Öztuncay’s explanations of printing techniques, a historical context is framed through captions by Jeroen Poblome. An additional layering presents quotations from a poem by Judith Desmyttere, inspired by the artists' creation process, the title of which gives its name to the concurrently published photobook, The Tortoise Arrived Alone One Day, published by Yapı Kredi Publications (2022).