"TURKEY CINEMASCOPE" LONDON EXHIBITION ( National Theatre, 22 January- 3 March 2007 )
Sue Steward, Evening Standard, 23 January 2007
"FILM-MAKERS SHARP EYE FOR CHARACTER" *****
Years behind a movie camera have left the award-winning Turkish film-maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan viewing the world through wide, horizontal frames.
On location trips for his latest film, Climates, he took a panoramic camera, but only in retrospect did he acknowledge the landscapes, city views and portraits as photographs not just reference pieces.
The overwhelmingly monochrome scenes were mostly shot at dusk, in snowy conditions.
Ceylan frequently distanced himself by standing on a mound overlooking a village where children herded sheep, or near a shepherd and his flock high above a temple ruin.
He possesses an exceptional sense of composition, and often shot where an arcing road gives views in two directions: Curved Street in Winter, Istanbul, opening onto a hill framed with old houses, and Baker Boy in Urfa, posed between the receding arms of a cobbled alley.
With the stirring portraits, it's as though Ceylan is in search of character actors: school-children, farmers, two sisters staring from their bleak farm yard, two men by the road, one frowning disapprovingly, the other with a twinkling smile.
In contrast, the winter scenes in Istanbul are about the exquisitely faded city. Ceylan exploits the blizzards in timeless pieces such as Trams in Beyoglu, where hunched-up pedestrians recall traditional Japanese painting.
The painterliness of Ceylan's photographs derives from his use of absorbent cotton-rag paper and archival pigment to add depth to detail. Vignettes from the bleak plains of Anatolia invite comparisons with Breughel: their white backgrounds and miniaturised, bundledup figures going about daily chores at dusk.
From his incidental beginning as a photographer, Ceylan is here revealed as a significant artist; and you leave burning with curiosity about his films.
........................................................................................................................................................
Benjamin Secher, The Telegraph, 20 January 2007
"HOT TICKET : NURI BILGE CEYLAN "
This and other evocative landscapes go on show next week, writes Benjamin Secher
You can almost hear the muffled crunch of snow underfoot as, one by one, pedestrians make their way down a single street in Istanbul.
At first glance, they appear anonymous, these monochrome figures obscured beneath hats and umbrellas. It's tempting to dismiss them as a fragmented herd, mindlessly trudging along the tyre tracks that sweep through the angular urban landscape in a fluvial curve.
But there are clues to their identities here, too: the boy tearing uphill in the distance, his right arm jutting out with effort; the portly fellow in the foreground rugged-up like a snowman, his trousers stuffed into his boots; the affectionate couple huddled beneath a single brolly, their legs moving perfectly in sync.
The picture, called simply Curved Street in Winter, was taken by the Turkish photographer and filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan while location-hunting for his latest movie.
It will go on show in London next week alongside 24 other evocative landscapes, all shot by Ceylan in wide cinemascope format and each capturing a different aspect of Turkey's varied terrain.
The exhibition's title, Climates, is also the name of Ceylan's new film, a thwarted love story that, like this photograph, balances the small human drama of its unhappy protagonists against the grand scale of its weather-beaten settings.
It is a worthy follow-up to Ceylan's previous award-winner, Uzak, the action once again moving with a deliberate slowness that enables the eye to feast on each immaculately composed shot.
........................................................................................................................................................
Geoff Andrew, Sight & Sound, February 2007
"PAINTERLY PRECISION"
That Nuri Bilge Ceylan takes photographs is no surprise: both 'Uzak' and 'Climates' have photographers as protagonists and his films are notable for their visual precision and poetry. Moreover, if his cinema can be said to resemble anyone else's, it's that of Abbas Kiarostami, whom Ceylan admires and whose cinematic work is also complemented by photographs notable for their serene and mysterious beauty.
But as the Turkey Cinemascope' exhibition of Ceylan's photographs at the recent Thessaloniki film festival revealed, it would be wrong to push a Ceylan-Kiarostami parallel too far. True, as Kiarostami favours landscapes in rural Iran, so many of Ceylan's photographs depict villages, country roads and farms - often with Mount Ararat towering in the background. But there the resemblance ends. It's not just that Ceylan also takes pictures of cityscapes and people, but more crucially that the photographs in this exhibition, all shot with a digital panoramic camera, look so like paintings.
This distinctive quality is partly the result of Ceylan using archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper, then coating the prints with archival varnish: the colours and texture are extraordinarily rich. But the painterly impression also derives from his sense of composition: I thought of Turner, Lowry, even Ford Maddox Brown's The Last of England'. Ceylan claims he merely wanted to document his country while he was searching for film locations. Yet the pictorial balance of 'Curved Street in Winter' (left), the detail in 'Village in Cappadocia', the play of light in 'Country Road at Dusk', the striking sense of scale in 'Football Players near Mount Ararat' and the discreet compassion in portraits like Two Sisters' or The Shepherd' all betoken a major talent.
........................................................................................................................................................
David N, OneDeadFish, 03 February 2007
"ON SOME FARAWAY BEACH"
I don't go to many Exhibitions. Or Galleries. Or museums, really. It seems an awful lot of effort, to go somewhere like that just to walk around, even if there are amazing works of art or items of historical interest to gaze upon. I'm old, I need to sit down with my culture these days.
But I make the occasional exception, especially if an artist I know and admire from another field is somehow involved. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, one such artist, is a Turkish film director. At the time of writing I've only seen one of his films (his latest, Climates, is released in the UK on Friday and I'm very much looking forward to it) but that film, Uzak (Distant) is a masterpiece. It is also an incredibly beautiful and vivid example of the possibilities of photography in modern cinema, and I was unsurprised to learn that Ceylan was a photographer before he began making films. Hes something of a renaissance man, Ceylan. He wrote, stars in and directed Climates (while his wife is his leading lady) and he is still a working photographer, claiming that still photography allows him an intimacy and connection with his subjects impossible in cinema. To coincide with the release of Climates, the National Theatre is hosting a small exhibition of Ceylan's recent photography, Turkish Cinemascope.
As is made plain by the title, Ceylan's work is explicitly cinematic. His pictures have the same dimensions as cinemascope frames, and many of his images recall the snowy Istanbul cityscapes so indeliby captured in Uzak. He uses pigment ink on cotton paper to give his blacks more power in the palette of his work, meaning that there is always a high contrast between the areas of shadow and shade and all other colours. This gives each picture a strange vibrancy, a heightened realism beyond mere representationalism, reminiscent of the power of cinematography. It also means that the many shots of Istanbul under snow appear starkly magnificent - the flashes of colour leap out of the pictures away from the blacks and whites. Films often make life appear more beautiful than it can to the naked eye, and Ceylan's photographs do the same thing.
Uzak felt like the work of an original and distinctive voice in World Cinema, but if it reminded me of any other director, then that director was Michaelangelo Antonioni. Ceylan's many studies of figures dwarfed by their environments - whether it be in the vastness of the Turkish countryside or between the Minarets of Istanbul and the dark swell of the Bosphorus - recalled Antonioni and his fascination with figures and their relationships with landscape, and his interrogation of the meanings of architecture. Turkish Cinemascope continues in a similar vein. Ceylan repeatedly picks out solitary figures against vast landscapes or desolate, darkened cityscapes. He often seems to deliberately include glimpes of both sides of Turkey, the ancient and modern, with cars just visible beyond crumbling sidestreets, and Mosques always dominating skylines. Many of these figures seem timeless, Ceylan obviously using his formidable eye to choose children with ancient faces and men with the air of the medievel bazaar about them as his subjects. As well as Antonioni, these pictures often reminded me of another Italian director, and perhaps the best ever exponent of the art of widescreen composition : Sergio Leone. Just check out the example below, and imagine the Morricone for yourself :
Ceylan's photography has been compared to the painting of Pieter Brueghel, and there is definitely something painterly about this work, in the epic scope of each picture, the attention to detail and the compositional eye. Ceylan views most of his landscapes from above, in a series of "God shots" which are possibly the most breathtaking feature of the exhibition. Seen like this, these old Turkish towns and temples look positively Biblical, and always beautiful. As well as fuelling my anticipation for Climates, these pictures made me want to visit Turkey, a first for me.
........................................................................................................................................................
Jason Spradlin, Vitruvian Mind, 22 January 2007
For those in London, I've seen clips of this and it's absolutely breathtaking. if you have time and interest I highly suggest checking out this show, as I'm sure the photo's are equally as impressive.
The multitalented Nuri Bilge Ceylan has had several incarnations, both in front of and behind the camera. This exhibition provides a deeper glimpse into his cinematic vision with a series of stunning wide-angle still photographs. All 25 images were snapped while the filmmaker scoured his native Turkey for locations for his award-winning film Climates. The "cinemascopes" feature bike-riding youngsters and sagacious shepherds, capturing the beauty of places as diverse as a snow-flecked Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul, the caves of Cappadocia, and the startling ruins at Aphrodisias.
........................................................................................................................................................
Mark Oliver, Guardian Unlimited journalist, 30 January 2007
The Turkish film maker Nuri Bilge Ceylan has taken some amazing photographs of Turkey while making his latest film, Climates. I saw some prints of the photos at the National Theatre in London. He has a great website, which has all of the ones from that exhibition ... and is very stylishly done.
An aside: while looking at the photographs it was quiet in the theatre hallways as the shows were ongoing and two of the theatre ushers - a man and a lover - were having a row in a corner. Where they lovers? As we walked around they moved to the other side ... which we then went to as we had not seen those photos and the guy actually complained to her that we were "following" them around! Lucky he was round a corner - I tell you - because I was up for fighting (he looked quite weedy and middle aged, naturally).
The photos made me want to see Ceylan's films; I am trying to get hold of a 2002 one called Uzak (Distant), which was the one he made before Climates. I also really want to visit Istanbul, and hope to do this sometime this year.
........................................................................................................................................................
Geoff Manaugh, BldgBlog, January 26, 2007
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a photographer and award-winning filmmaker.
His latest project, Turkey Cinemascope, is particularly striking; although most of the images are really a kind of richly contextualized human portraiture, there are at least a dozen urban and landscape shots worth seeing: wide-screen horizons; city streets bending round themselves in the snow; hill villages; rainy coasts.
Needless to say, these are infinitely more impressive when viewed in a larger format.
According to the Guardian, these photos "take as their subject the Turkish landscape, transformed into eerie, dream-like frescoes which one critic compared to the work of Pieter Brueghel."
........................................................................................................................................................
Jean, Typepad, 16 February 2007
"IN TURKEY AGAIN: NURI BILGE CEYLAN"
I saw his photos first, on exhibition in London to coincide with the opening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's new film, 'Climates'.
You'd think they would be filmic, and the panoramic format, as he acknowledges, is like cinemascope, but these are above all painterly. Horizons, pattern, predominantly black and white with thick daubs of colour: clouds, walls, people. Figures dwarfed by landscape. Silhouettes of men, women and children of a size with those of birds and animals. The tiny figures, often against snow, reminded me of Brueghul. In one photo of pigeons in a snowy Istanbul square the flock of birds in the foreground are the same size as the people in the distance, and a flying bird's outline magically fuses with that of a girl so that she has wings as well as dancing legs. Full of dark and full of light, both brooding and airy, such resonant and moving photographs.
And then, the next day, I went to see the film, a sensitive, subtle, beautiful film, set in Istanbul, by the sea, amidst ancient ruins, and in a town of Eastern Turkey in mid-winter (like walking into Orhan Pamuk's novel, Snow). And a bleakly, brutally realistic depiction of the hurting, hating side of love, wherein the male protagonist, played by the director, takes photos - the photos in the exhibition, surely, for as he went about his work, on location, was when he took them. He takes photos instead of relating to his wife on holiday, instead of finishing his doctoral thesis. He poses a young taxi driver, his strong, young face against the landscape, a shot like several in the exhibition. The youngster, with eagerness that contrasts touchingly with his macho pose, asks for a copy to give to his girlfriend, writes his name and address on a post-it note, and in the next scene we see the photographer pull it from his pocket with his cigarettes at a cafe table, screw it up and toss it in the ashtray.
I left the cinema disturbed and upset, not from sentimental identification with the characters, who are not particularly sympathetic, but by the powerful portrayal of the pain and frailty and dishonesty of an intimate relationship, so like what I have known. An old-fashioned film, one London reviewer said, harking back to Italian neo-realism. Not the film I saw. I'd never seen anything at all like it. The actors include the director, his wife and his parents. Some scenes are surely improvised. And it's more often intimately harsh than intimately gentle. A powerful experience.
I went back to look again at the photos, and found them tainted. What was only overwhelmingly and intriguingly beautiful now seemed perhaps more contrived, more questionable. My discomfort, though, means they will surely linger with me longer than mere beauty would.
........................................................................................................................................................
David Wootton, The Social Affairs Unit, 22 February 2007
"IMAGES OF A VANISHING WORLD"
David Wootton - Anniversary Professor of History, University of York - is captivated by images of a vanishing world.
In between having a less-than-perfect time watching Coram Boy,, I chanced across an exhibition of panoramic photographs of Turkey by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who is apparently a well-known film director. My they are wonderful! They were taken as part of his search for locations, and are all in widescreen format (although the exact ratios of height to width seem to vary, and it would be good to know if they are cropped, and indeed what sort of camera they were taken with). Many of them show snow scenes. What makes them so wonderful?
First, and most obviously they seem technical marvels: the resolution is astonishing; they are printed on cloth; they are in fact limited edition prints (twenty to an edition - no prices, but I wanted to take some home with me).
Second, all, or almost all, create a sense of some slight dislocation of scale. There is an enormous hill, cradled in a bowl of lakes and hills, and the shapes are so nurturing one thinks of human scales. There is a glowing palace seen from above that one thinks is a miniature model, too small to be real. There is a curve in a road, seen from above - the curve seems too sharp to be quite possible.
Third, the people, when there are people, are often centre stage, looking at the camera or at us; but certainly not speaking. They have an extraordinary dignity, but the nature of our encounter with them is profoundly puzzling - we have distracted them from their tasks, but they neither engage with us, nor we with them.
Fourth, one can see that Ceylan must make beautiful films, and must be a remarkable director of actors (for these photographs are surely posed). And there seems, even in these almost random images, to be a story - a story of dignity in adversity, of accidental beauty, of an environment which is hostile (many of them are snow scenes; in one there are floods) but not overwhelmingly destructive. They record a complicated compromise between human beings and nature, in which each has made concessions to the other. And this is of course to say that these photographs record a vanishing world - a world we have lost, for the most part, in the First World. It is as if they recorded life in the south of England a hundred years ago - after the industrial revolution (there are roads and railways), but long before central heating, or waterproof clothing. It is not hopelessly sentimental, I think, to see that this was in many respects a better world, if a harsher one. But whether this is true or not, I found these photographs beautiful, moving, eloquent, and in some sense profound. If you are anywhere nearby before 3rd March, make a detour to see them.
David Wootton is Anniversary Professor of History, University of York. He is the author of Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates.
........................................................................................................................................................
Elizabeth, Verbal Privilege (Brooklyn), 26 February 2007
"LONGING (GERÇEKTEN MUHTEŞEM)"
A few weeks ago my mentor R. forwarded me an email with the subject line "gerçekten, muhteşem"--truly, magnificent--containing a link to Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Turkey Cinemascope. Ceylan, director of the films Uzak (Distant) and İklimler (Climates) shot these seventy photographs with a cinemascope camera from 2003-2006. I got no more work that afternoon, unraveled by the images familiar (İstanbul streets and waterways, snowbound in winter) and unknown (the vast open stretches of the Eastern borderlands, unfurling to the foothills of Ararat, one of the few parts of Turkey I've still never seen.) The six above are not even favorites, really, though I prize the picture of the Taksim-Tünel tram, steps from our flat (and echoing Ara Güler's iconic Beyoğlu winter shot)--how could I choose to leave out a schoolchild by the railway, or cormorants along the Bosphorus, or a rock-carved citadel-village in Cappadocia that I've walked to, on foot from the nearest town, three times since 2000?
I have been restless lately, longing fiercely to be traveling, most of all to go back to Turkey. There's always a little subterranean rumble of wishing to be in İstanbul, but in the last month it's grown louder, especially since Hrant Dink's death, and that weekend flooded with photographs of people marching in the streets. Much of the work I am doing lately is related to these matters (which has kept me from blogging too much about them). This last week in particular, these Eastern Anatolian landscapes have gained an aching resonance, peopled with ghosts from the books scattered across my desk. In a few days, I'll be meeting the new editor of Agos, and other brave people trying to carve out space for hope and change there.
Ceylan's photos arrived in my inbox the week before I headed to London, and I soon realized that the photographs were actually on exhibit at the National Theatre. After my meetings ended on Tuesday I went straight there, and spent five minutes standing still before the warmth of the tiny yellow-lit window in "Returning Home, Ardahan, 2004." The website barely does the photographs justice: they're each a meter long, and printed with ink and varnish on cotton-rag paper, which produces a strange, painterly effect.
Early that Friday morning, I went back to London to meet W. during his three-hour escape from the Jo'burg-Seattle Heathrow stopover, and as we sat in an Italian coffeehouse in Covent Garden, he said he'd been nearly in tears at those photos I'd forwarded him--if only he'd had time to stay for a real visit in London, and see them! I looked at him, across the remains of tea and cake, and said Well, I think the National opens at ten o'clock--and like that, we were alight, ransacking our rusty memories of the Tube map and calculating how long it would take to get to Embankment and walk across the bridge. So now the photos recall not only Türkiye günleri, but those stolen minutes of a long-awaited reunion, three of the happiest hours 2007 has brought me yet.
|
