2002 >

Tourists

Photo Installation

"... for" Platform Garanti, Istanbul

"Uncertain Signs, True Stories", Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany; Curator:Angelika Stephken

You are only a tourist in certain places and at certain times. Tourists take pictures or make videos to remind them of their nice holidays or to be able to bring foreign places into their home.Neriman Polat took pictures of "Tourists" (2001) sightseeing in a city, filming sights, lying on the beach, refreshing themselves in small lakes.She observes people and groups who watch themselves or- quite the reverse- are feeling totaly unobserved. From a photographical distance she returns – seemingly devoid of emotion and yet assuming the offensive in the act of the imagining- the one-sidedness of the tourist’s view. Her gaze, respectively that of the camera, remains anonymous. She puts herself in an alien position , in order to record aliens in an alien place. Polat’s image of tourists is not really a sociological or social-political one. Rather, it is characterised by the distance between the camera and the object, which repeats and reflects the one dividing the tourists and their actual enviroment. On the pictures, there are people trying to figure out where they are right now, respectively comparing this picture with the one they had perhaps made before that journeyed to the objects of their desire.Neriman Polat’s photos of tourists work with distance as well as with the discrepancy between what is visible and images remainning hidden, untraceable, preconceived or images of imagination never articulated, orientations and projections.

Angelika Stepken

Turistler

Foto-Yerleştirme

"…için" Platform Garanti, İstanbul

Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Almanya; Küratör: Angelika Stephken

2002 >