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tray dogs. They’re a vexing
presence for urban dwellers
in many of the world’s
most populous cities,
their existence provoking
antipathy and often loathing.
Indeed, even the word ‘stray’
is fraught with negative
connotations – disconnected, adrift,
separate. But for documentary and street
photographer Sevil Alkan, when captured
through a camera’s lens, a stray dog’s
vantage point as it moves from place
to place ‘opens new channels of reflection’
for the human eye.
Alkan’s award-winning series Stray
Dog – a work she describes as ‘a natural
habitat I can take shelter in after straying
into various unchartered territories in my
photographic journey’ – recently won first
place in the Series category at LensCulture’s
Street Photography Awards. ‘Stray Dog is
not, and won’t be, a project,’ she says of the
work, which was made in her native Turkey.
It was never intended to present a portrait
of life on the city streets. ‘Rather, it’s a visual
approach. I started to grow a new visual
bond with Istanbul and its people, animals
and inanimate objects. This resulted in
images trying to unveil for the viewer the
complexity of everyday street scenes.’
Alkan grew up in a small town in
Turkey’s Black Sea region, a coastal area
of resplendent valleys and plateaus, rich
with flora and dense vegetation, where the
summers are balmy and the winters cool
and wet. Her father was a walnut trader,
the region’s main source of agriculture, and
her mother a housewife – ‘the beating heart
of our home,’ she says, and the inspiration
behind her acclaimed series Housewives,
in which Alkan documents Turkey’s
‘forgotten’ women. ‘There are around 14
million housewives in Turkey – workers who
turn groups of rooms inhabited by family
members into homes, bearing the brunt of a
job they can never leave or hand over. Once
a housewife, your time, happiness, health,
your body and your future are all dedicated
to a sacred cause. You become invisible.’
Housewives received national attention for
its focus on the role of women in Turkish
society, though she says of the work that she
was merely a spectator in the lives of others.
Stray Dog, by comparison, is inextricably
linked with Alkan the woman.09
B+W‘...a natural habitat I can take
shelter in after straying into
various unchartered territories
in my photographic journey.’