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B+W
‘Architecture involves art,
history, a feeling of perspective,
and creativity – it has helped
me a great deal in expressing
myself through photography.’›
O
f her childhood, she says her
mother ‘meant everything to
our home. She was home.’
Yet while traditional and
tight-knit, she and her brother were
encouraged to leave behind life in her
rural hometown for the excitement andopportunity afforded in Turkey’s big cities.
‘I studied architecture at Middle East
Technical University in Ankara,’ she says.
‘I can’t really say that architecture was
always my childhood dream, or my calling,
but I became passionate about it at
university. Architecture involves art,history, a feeling of perspective, and
creativity – it has helped me a great deal
in expressing myself through photography.’
Where Housewives left Alkan feeling
disconnected from her subjects, Stray Dog
is a series in which she feels present. It was
born in part of her desire to understand
herself in the wider context of humanity,
exploring existential questions for which
there are often no answers. ‘I strayed into
a sphere of feelings where I had never
been before,’ she writes on her website.
‘A heightened state of awareness that shed
a brighter light on things. I made Stray Dog
at a time, around the age of 35, when I
started to question whether or not I had
achieved what I felt I deserved emotionally.
This did not result in a typical, introverted
mood that might make some women stay in
for a chocolate binge. Rather, I went out and
wandered the streets of Istanbul with my
camera. Instead of brooding over my
personal life, I explored the lives of others.
I was not focusing on any particular subject,
situation, place or people. What mattered
was the fact that I was seeing things in a
different light. I found that having not
answered questions about myself helped a
great deal when asking questions about the
people and places that I photographed.’›