PRESS

"TURKEY CINEMASCOPE"  THESSALONIKI EXHIBITION ( Bezesteni Market, 17 Nov 2006 - 3 Dec 2006 )

Ronald Bergan, Guardian (UK), 27 November 2006
...Finally, the stunning photos by the Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose splendid Climates will soon be released in the UK. All in colour and in the shape of a Cinemascope screen, they take as their subject the Turkish landscape, transformed into eerie, dream-like frescoes which one critic compared to the work of Pieter Brueghel. Almost worth the trip to Thessaloniki alone.

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Geoff Andrew, Time Out (UK), 30 November 2006
...An odd comparison, I confess; but the most exciting thing I saw in Thessaloniki was the exhibition of the young-ish Turk's extraordinary photos, accompanying a retro of the brilliant if brief career of the writer-cameraman-director-editor-producer of 'Uzak' (Distant). This man is most certainly the business, and just as his films have a rare photographic beauty, so his 'Scope photos of Turkey feel like paintings. Why a mention here? If all goes to plan, they'll be in London in February when 'Climates' opens. Watch this space. and prepare to be amazed.

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Ronald Bergan, Greencine, 29 November 2006
However, the exhibition that stood out from all the others, for its setting almost as much as the photos, was Turkey CinemaScope: The World of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, displayed in the Bezesteni, a 15th-century Turkish market building with six domes, restored during the 1990s. Those who know Ceylan's films, mainly Clouds of May, Distant and the recent Climates, will not be surprised that the Turkish director has a great eye.
All in color and the shape of a CinemaScope screen, the photos capture eerie landscapes, which one critic appropriately compared to the paintings of Pieter Breugel, the Elder and spectral cities, with isolated people unchanged from medieval times peering at the camera. It's the sort of exhibition that can only make one return to cinema with an awakened visual appreciation.

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Marion Inglessi, Greece, November 2006
From the first photograph of Nuri Bilge Ceylan that I encountered I thought of Pieter Bruegel. With rising excitement I looked at the next and the next till the spark of recognition became a certainty. I was either faced with a contemporary renaissance master, or Pieter Bruegel was the first traveling photographer of the Northern Renaissance. The eerie landscapes where different scenes are played out simultaneously, forcing the eye to travel ceaselessly around the canvas, the clarity of image and attention to detail, the heart-rending, dramatic skies, the epic scale, the heaving elements of nature. The feverish activity of the people of the earth, the weather-beaten, unshaven figures, muffled in their shapeless, timeless clothes, the ever-present animal kingdom accompanying and complementing man. The biblical spectral cities on the rocks, the snow, the cold, the vast unknown continent suspended in time. The classical ruins overtaken by vegetation and man in a strangely symbiotic (co)existence. The futile and unique position of man in the Universe.

One of the most outstanding characteristics in both Bruegel's and Ceylan's landscapes is the viewer's perspective. The painter and the photographer choose to describe the scene from above, from the top of a

mountain, from a bird's eye view, (or the eye of God observing the earth).

Ceylan's photograph Curved Street in Winter is taken from the second storey of a building. There is a curved street in the snow forming a choreographed trajectory, and a series of identical dark-clad figures with downcast eyes, walking oblivious to our scrutiny, as though the same person were duplicated as far as the eye can see. In Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow, we have the same point of view, a similar purpose of movement and body language - the averted faces, the bent backs - the curve of the hill replacing the curve of the road with the depth of field remaining the same. Even the monochromatic quality of both worlds is similar. Furthermore, Ceylan's photographs The Village and Football Players near Mount Ararat could be close-ups of the Hunters painting with a powerful zoom lens. Every minute detail is discernible, down to the faintest trace of movement or life in the vast frozen landscape.

The photographs Village in Cappadocia and Ishakpasa have the same layout and outlandish feel to them as Bruegel's paintings The Road to Calvary and The Tower of Babel. Village in Cappadocia is a panoramic photograph from a promontory across a precipice, where a city carved in the rock rises up out of the void.  A bare rocky cliff looms over the ashen city, which seems abandoned, petrified, spellbound. Ishakpasa likewise, seems to have materialised in the cradle of the mountains without human intervention, like an imaginary vision, a golden mirage.  In Bruegel's two paintings the mood is the same, the heavy skies, the imaginary landscape, the rock-city. It is almost the same film location, first totally bereft of life, then suddenly swarming with activity.

In the photograph Sardes, there is a harmonious flow between the creations of man and those of the Universe. The silvery light piercing the clouds, the mountains in the distance, the green hills peppered by the white sheep rolling down the slope. Suddenly, the ruins of a temple spring out of the ground lending a serious note to the lightness of the scene, which finds its climax in the dignified and comical figure of the shepherd perched like a little god on the top right hand side of the photograph holding an umbrella.  If the camera sweeps panoramically to the left over the hill, we will find ourselves without effort or surprise in Bruegel's painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. The clouds part and the sun shines golden over sea and land. All of nature breathes in unison. The sheep climb over the next cliff, man goes about his daily toil, the ships open their sails to the rising wind, the city glitters in the distance, the sea follows the curve of the horizon, even Icarus, who vanishes in the foreground, barely makes a ripple.

The world is too magnificent, and man's passage is transient. Only his creations remain behind - cities, a plowed field, ancient ruins, works of art, paintings, photographs, films...