Köprüaltı

Sep 282014

archive : 2014

Emine Gozde Sevim

Moderated by James Wellford, photographers Emine Gozde Sevim and Jake Price will provide in depth insight into the protests that engulfed Turkey in the summer of 2013, which still resonate throughout society today.

Presenters: Emine Gozde Sevim Jake Price

Moderators: James Wellford

Location: Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands

Presented by University of Michigan and Knight Wallace Fellows Foundation

Moderated by James Wellford, photographers Emine Gozde Sevim and Jake Price will provide in depth insight into the protests that engulfed Turkey in the summer of 2013, which still resonate throughout society today.

Rather than purely focusing on what took place in the streets between the protesters and police forces during the Gezi Park protests, photographers Sevim and Price saw this period as an outburst of deeper notions embedded within, eventually expressed as a protest. They approached this historic moment as a manifestation not only about a park, but as a symbol in which the people of Turkey ventured to protect their existence in contemporary society.

Supported by the University of Michigan and Knight Wallace Fellows Foundation, Wellford travelled to Turkey and met with opposition leaders, ruling party politicians and civilians who find themselves at the center of Turkey’s divide, equipping him with a comprehensive knowledge regarding the current pulse in the country. The talk will facilitate a dynamic and thought provoking conversation placing the protests in the context of the most recent developments in Turkey.

Presenter Bios

Emine Gozde Sevim

Since 2007, Sevim embarked on creating an “alternative” Middle-Eastern visual narrative in the context of post-9/11 era. Her maternal family had left Kabul, Afghanistan in 1975, where Sevim returned to visit with her Afghan grandfather in 2007, following the U.S. invasion. Since then, she has worked in Palestine, Turkey and Egypt creating a comprehensive project about “lives-in-passing” in contested geographies. In an attempt to expand beyond the religio-political descriptions of life in the region, Sevim’s visual narrative deals with existentialist complexities of provincial daily realities in the context of current historical transitions.

Her on-going body of work about the Middle East has been recognized by various international venues, including Camera Club of New York (2013) and Prix de la Photographie in Paris (2013), among others. Her first book project on Egypt was shortlisted for MACK’s First Book Award in London and added to the Collection of the National Media Museum in Bradford
(2014).

Sevim currently divides her time between New York and the Middle East.
Jake Price

Jake has worked as a freelance producer for the BBC for over 15 years producing multi-media pieces for BBC In Pictures. Along with James Wellford, senior International Photo editor at Newsweek he founded SeenUnseen which promotes in-depth stories that the mainstream media overlooks.

World Press Photo awarded Jake an honorable mention for his immersive web documentary, Unknown Spring.

His transmedia and photography appears in The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Orion Magazine, Newsweek, Le Monde II and others throughout the world.

Moderator Bios

James Wellford

James Wellford was a senior photo editor at Newsweek magazine. He has collaborated on a number of award-winning projects recognized by World Press Photo, the Overseas Press Club, and at the Visa Pour L’Image. Additionally, he has curated a number of exhibitions including Projections of Reality (Moscow), Darkness Visible, Afghanistan by Seamus Murphy (VII Gallery, New York City), and is a co-founder of the group SeenUnseen, a series of programs that explores in-depth visual stories addressing controversial political issues. Wellford teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York.

Related Exhibitions

Köprüaltı

Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 5 Uplands

In the summer of 2013, two photographers, Jake Price and Emine Gozde Sevim, independently from each other found themselves in the same place: Gezi Park in Istanbul and its vicinity during the 18 days of protests that shook prime minister Erdogan’s eleven year old regime as never seen before.

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