Globale Positionen 02

On Bülent Şangar's work for "Global Positions"

Work presented: "Untitled" (1997), series of photographic images (26x40 cms each)

 

Bülent Şangar has been using photography to document a variety of performances and staged tableaux where his friends, himself or members of his family play as actors of the dramas and situations represented. Most of his series are inspired in the socio-political reality of his own country, Turkey, but they can be easily extrapoled to other contexts. Bülent Şangar reflects and analyses the ways in which authorities impose their laws over us, and how the tension between fear and desire impulses us to overcome those regulations.

In his series "Untitled" (1997) he appears going in and out of the windows of his home in an ironic "aller-retour" between the inside and the outside. In every image he presents different moments of the sequences of the trip: from the ritual of throwing water as a sign of venture for the traveller, to the display of maps, books, umbrellas and other elements needed in the journey. The sequences of images can be read horizontally and vertically, generating various imaginary narrations. Şangar' s trip is a short and metaphorical one. It represents the desire to leave and the satisfaction achieved just with the fantasy of it.

(Barcelona, 1999)

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