TUGBA YÜKSEL / PORTFOLIO

born 1979 in istanbul. she finished marmara collage as a art teacher.

During my childhood I used to embrace drawing picture of bus and people who looks round from the bus with a smile. Especially the bus driver was very important so he must have surely a cap and I should not have forgotten the steering wheel. In addition, headlights and the roads that we could see by the triangular spotlights…

I bought a camera and began to spend hours in Eminönü and Kadıköy to taking photograph in my every spare day. Each time I was spending one or two hours between bus stops. Those places were like a forest, people looked like trees. They dropped their branches over bus stops and on the seats in their natural states… The single ones was colored green, the people in couples or groups were in blue. While recording their pictures my questions were on one hand somehow getting lesser on the other hand becoming more.

Firstly, day-light studies started. In the beginning I refrained very much from the eyes on me and from turning my camera over them but after a while I started not to see anyone. Because I had little time and must have been faster. I had to find the right frame, to press shutter release with correct setting of my camera until passengers get out of and in the bus.

Somebody smiling and waving me (generally they used to be old people or children), gesturing to show their anger, showing reactions with speech that I could not hear behind the pane.

I could become familiar to some of them. I could witness their way back, whom I sent off in the morning, when I crossed the street to the other bus stop towards the evening . You can see your relatives when spent your 9.5 hours at the same stop or one of your students can see her teacher smiling by looking at her camera…

There were different reactions at each district’s bus stop and each bus had different specific passengers. Both 4 and 500 T passengers were not very much resembling each other! People travelling in red colored city busses, public busses and green colored new busses were different, besides their lights, the clearness and vapour density on the windowpanes were reflected in the photos differently. After a while I could estimate the photographic results depending on the bus stop and the bus.

Night shotings started in the length of time. These were different busses carrying people’ s exhaustions, their resigned faces and tired bodies with deep daydreams in the darkness.

The lamp that could not illuminate the interior sufficiently, while it was brightening close portraits, was leaving the others near the pane in darkness. A burning light in the darkness and everything which was trying to be illumined had so beautiful transitions with high ISO that all colors started to give me a taste of a painting. And images with steamed up panes began to remind me “Odd Nerdrum” portraits. They were like a continuation of my pictures from my childhood…

Sometimes there were stories in my frame of the people who did not know each other. At the front one was standing, a man with a dark suit and white shirt was close to the window. While he was talking on the phone, the other man who was counting his prayer beads at his right side behind him was eying him angrily. In the meantime, a woman was completing the story with a confused and frozen expression.

The way of lives were bringing people close to each other and drifting apart as well... To a situation that one was laughing at, another one was showing negative response. Mostly there were no happy expressions  in those frames because they were alone. Smiling of that girl at a joke made by a DJ in a moment from the radio would cause all faces to turn over to her.

Or she would share a funny story with her friend probably with guffaw, when she were sitting next to her. But not at this moment… It is getting harder to see any expression where there is no communication. Abstracted, unhappy, and thoughtful expressions are just because of this. A tired face when seing me taking her photo could regain and smile.

Others with their friends were reflected more comfortably, more lively and affirmatively…

But their reflections were different from one another…

Requests of people who were waiting for the bus were focusing on the direction of  mirroring their suffering.

Some of bus drivers who were giving meaning to my doing were helping by waiting me to end my shootings…

Some of small bus drivers were driving their car in front of my composition and waiting there without any tolerence…

I deeply enjoyed while studying this series, this is my first Project and special to me. An important step causing to expand my perspective on photography and everything attached to it.

Special thanks to my sister Nevra for helping me in every respect at cold winter nights for hours at the bus stops.

…and to everything that is entirely concrete and abstract …