Camera and Retrospect: or How to Annotate Life
by Nazli Adigüzel
Since I started studying anthropology, I have been thinking about my relationship with photography. Quite often, I discourage myself from pressing the shutter button, allowing thoughts about Power and Narrative to settle in. Although a healthy amount of self-reflection and an understanding of the politics of representation are crucial to consuming and appreciating visual media, one must not forget the sheer joy capturing an instance can be. For photography is to still time, materialize an interpretive reality, and visualize the narratives we construct. Here, I share a few photographs I have taken over the years. Some are mere combinations of pixels, occupying their places in my SD card, and some have undergone chemical processing in darkrooms, now stacked on top of each other in my dusty albums. Despite their textural differences, in my opinion, they all embrace the beauty and oddities of everyday life.
1. This first photograph, taken during the 2021 lockdown, is from a virtual ballet rehearsal of my sister, who was kind enough to allow me to photograph her. When Time, as we sensed it (with its schedules, alarms, and calendars), became obsolete, my sister’s online ballet classes were one-hour reminders of the fact that Tuesdays and Thursdays still existed outside of our house. Looking back at this photograph, I now understand why 19th-century Impressionists were constantly painting ballerinas— the stamina and the elegance they exude are utterly transcendental.
2. Boredom breeds creativity, some say. This is precisely what happened to me when I was having a staring contest with this Venetian mask instead of doing my calculus homework when I was 16. This mask still dares the dwellers of our living room to a staring competition, but I believe I was the only one in our household to take a photograph of it by placing a piece of fake-crystal prism in front of my lens
3. It is not every day that I am genuinely impressed by street musicians, yet I still think about this Austrian duo converting Museumsquartier in Vienna to the set of Alice in Wonderland. I took many photographs during that trip, some of which I am quite satisfied with, but this one remains my favourite because it is a simple reminder of how genuinely fun humankind can be.
In high school, my literature teacher would always tell his students to hold a pen while reading because it would encourage us to annotate. Here, I tried to choose photographs that I took before I started studying anthropology; it was a period of my life where I was truly annotating life with my camera, one eye closed and the other looking through the lens. This is mainly a reminder for me to start carrying my cameras with me, and hopefully, this can be an encouragement for you, too, dear Readers: to observe, enjoy, and capture life in any medium that satisfies your eyes and minds.