| My camera’s viewfinder is a world of magic. When I look through it, everything changes and transforms into something different—lifeless things turn into living spirits, branches into arms of a ghost and people into scary souls and then I become someone different than who i was. Maybe I am a bird flying freely in the sky, a hideous monster living underground or a desperate lover searching for his soulmate. A frame of 24 x 36 millimeters is a dreamland for me, a secret shelter where i can tell of my fragile world. |  |
Murat Harmanlikli
“What exists in the universe is all delusion and imagination. They are either reflections in mirrors or like shadows.”
—Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
My camera’s viewfinder is a world of magic. When I look through it, everything changes and transforms into something different—lifeless things turn into living spirits, branches into arms of a ghost and people into scary souls and then I become someone different than who i was. Maybe I am a bird flying freely in the sky, a hideous monster living underground or a desperate lover searching for his soulmate. A frame of 24 x 36 millimeters is a dreamland for me, a secret shelter where i can tell of my fragile world.
My photography is nourished by the vivid stories of the streets: the lullabies that make me sleep and the screams that wake me up. Chaotic poems from the streets and the poems of my shady mind run hand-in-hand in my photos. Reading mysterious letters in the faces of people running about in the crowds and composing nameless, timeless and groundless photos from those letters is just a sad game. It is a hopeless search for visions of “you” in every unknown face. Streets offer endless treasures for those who don’t know what they are looking for.
And nights—an irresistible attraction to nights holds me tight in its arms. This is a dreamy love story under the city lights between me and my camera. Sometimes it is tragic, sometimes joyful, but always passionate. Night is a great illusionist opening doors from a world of reality into a world of imagination. Shadows, silhouettes and reflections are the actors in this surreal play. The journey from the real world to this surreal world is just a modest summary of my photography.
