The Stain of Time

TÜRKÇE

When I pressed the shutter at the Sırçalı Medrese in Konya, I placed my trust in that peerless turquoise blue, which looked magnificent even through the viewfinder. Yet, in analog photography, the process does not end the moment you lift your finger from the shutter.

Sırçalı’s iconic turquoise blue. A trial of flawless geometry against the 'imperfect' chemicals of the lab bath. These stains, merging with the purity of the blue, act as seals marking the documentation of today.

Even when using a professional-grade film like Portra 400, the exhausted chemicals of the laboratory sometimes force their way into the narrative. Rather than a mere technical error, the stains in these frames are chemical residues that accompany history’s inherent 'fragility.' This meeting of crumbling tiles and development stains offers a 'serendipity' far more authentic than any staged aesthetic. We don't erase the mistakes; we record them as a fragment of history.

Intention Over Chemistry

Sometimes, the reality you perceive through the viewfinder is left at the mercy of chemistry the moment it strikes the silver nitrate. On the Asian side of Istanbul, light finally touched a film that had been waiting for twenty years. When the lab doors closed for the expired Ektachrome roll in my hand, I surrendered the film to cross-processing—knowing full well it would yield a greenish tint—as a deliberate chapter for my 'Shutterlag' philosophy.

Because an E-6 lab was nowhere to be found, we committed the film to C-41 chemicals, embarking on a 'cross-processing' experiment. As blues shifted into greens, the grain surfaced the memory of a twenty-year-old dust. These notes are not merely a record of a technical error; they are a documentation of how 'unstaged reality' is sometimes reimagined by chemistry itself.

Expired film reimagines Istanbul’s classic seagull silhouettes against a surreal pink sky and a poison-green sea.

You can find the full documentation of this process and the details of the story via the Substack link.

The Essence of Light: Why Black and White?

Color can sometimes be a distraction. As a journalist on the street, the vibrancy of a red or the allure of a blue can easily overshadow the core of the story. But when you strip away the color, only three things remain: light, shadow, and emotion.

The Honesty of Grey

For me, black and white photography is the purest form of "writing with light"—a concept I deeply explored during my cinema studies in Montreal. While colors tell us the hour of the day or the season of the year, black and white tells us how the moment felt. The dust motes in a quilt-maker’s workshop or the deep-set lines on Ferdi’s face find their truest voice in shades of grey.

The Texture of Analog (Grain)

The smoothness of digital can often feel sterile and soulless. In contrast, the grainy structure of 35mm black and white film—born from silver nitrate—gives the photograph a "skin." This texture reinforces the honesty of documentation; with all its flaws and roughness, it is the truth itself.

The invisible weight

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!”
— Ted Grant