CENTRAL NEWS
Taking pictures is a combustion…
Light falls on the film, the film burns…
Light falls to the heart, the heart burns…
People outside the mountain have only seen pictures taken so far. What about those which have not been taken, those which cannot be taken? How can we get transfer the photos that are only seen by our eyes and taken by our hearts to people…
How long does it take to take a photo created by touching the shutter button of the camera? How many photos are there to tell the history of the Kurdish people coming from the darkness?
I don’t know exactly how many photos of the Kurdish mountains I have been in years, but every time I have felt the inadequacies in my heart. I have to say that here. I think that what my camera takes is less than what my heart does.
There are photographs in my heart that I have been thinking about for a long time. There are faces, words, and relationships I can’t put in any photo frames. There are times when the camera can’t cover enough.
A friend of mine calls it ‘biological photos’. I say ‘photos of our hearts ’. I think we mean the same thing.
Are there more photographs which we have taken, than those which we cannot?
Does what we see shapes us, or those which we cannot?
Taking pictures is a combustion.
The light passes through the lens, falls on the chemical film,
The film turns to light. We see the photo. There are also photos taken by our hearts. Light falls to the heart. Our hearts turn into flames. This is the photo that remains in our heart, nobody sees it. Only we see these, only we know.
A guerrilla says a word. Sings another song. The sound of a bullet reaches his ear. Blood flows from a wound. A masked face smiles. A woman falls into the abyss. Someone betrays himself and everyone. You take pictures of them all. What percentage of this can the camera capture? But the heart catches them all. Whether it wants tp or not, it takes pictures of them all.
Maybe you have the right to choose with the camera, but your heart is obliged to take and keep pictures of everything good and bad, painful and cheerful, beautiful and ugly. It does this without you knowing, without you being aware of it, with great care and persistence.
I don’t know exactly how the photos taken by the camera affect people, but the photos taken by our hearts first affect our hearts, then our faces and our eyes. Every photo taken in our heart draws a line to our heart, and a color to our heart. Our heart also creates a dark or light zone. And we, our hearts, take shape similar to things that occur. The photos taken by our heart make us. Someone gets shot next to you, it hits your heart. A woman’s sobs are heard, tears fall into our hearts. A sweaty face hits the wind, our hearts cool. Photography becomes our heart, our heart becomes our face, our face becomes our eyes…
Taking pictures is a two-way relationship. The photo creates eyes, the eyes create photo. Therefore, the snaps of the heart must be skillfully adjusted so that the heart does not burn, decay or disappear. The way an eye looks, it takes the photo. Every photo taken converts the eye, creates the eye. And it goes on like this. They rise up or down like a ladder.
One needs to know to see.
-Photographer of the mountains, Martyr Xelil Dag
