Photographing the Un-Abandoned Spaces: Uncanny Interiors -an MFA Graduation Project by Metehan Ozcan

PHOTOGRAPHING THE UN-ABANDONED SPACES:

UNCANNY INTERIORS

METEHAN ÖZCAN

100606014

ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY

THE INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

MASTER OF FINE ARTS IN VISUAL COMMUNICATION DESIGN

Project Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cihangir İstek

JUNE 2012

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Project Submitted by:

METEHAN ÖZCAN

100606014

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Fine Arts in

Visual Communication Design

Approved by:

_________________________________________________

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cihangir İstek (Project Supervisor)

______________________________

Assist. Prof. Dr. Zafer Aracagök

Date of Approval: _________________

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Abstract

Ever since its first pronunciation, the concept of uncanny has left its mark over the world

of aesthetics. The art of photography has a special kinship with the concept, due to its

ability to double the reality, but not as the same. In this project the author attempts to re-

read and position his personal oeuvre in the light of the concept of uncanny. The analyses

will also be accompanied by works of other photographers. All the works that will be cited

are chosen as photographs of the interiors. With this study the author aims at attaining a

critical distance towards his photographs, and become more competent about working with

concepts in his future series.

Keywords: Photography, Uncanny, Freud, Interiors, Modernism, Contemporary

Photography

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Özet

Tekinsiz kavramı dile geldiği günden bu yana estetik dünyasında iz bırakmıştır.

Gerçekliğin gerçekliklikle aynı olmayan ikiliğini üretme yeteneğinden kaynaklı olarak

fotoğraf sanatı kavramla özel bir yakınlık taşımaktadır. Bu projede yazar tekinsiz kavramı

ışığında kendi eserlerini yeniden okumaya ve kuramsal bağlamaya yerleştirmeye

kalkışmaktadır. Çözümlemelere yer yer digger fotoğrafçıların işleri de eşlik etmektedir.

Bahsi geçen işler iç mekan fotoğrafları olarak belirlenmiştir. Yazar bu çalışmayla

fotoğraflarına karşı eleştirel bir mesafe kazanmayı ve gelecekteki serilerinde kavramlar

üzerinden çalışma konusunda daha yeterli hale gelmeyi hedeflemektedir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Fotoğraf, Tekinsiz, Freud, İç mekanlar, Modernizm, Çağdaş

Fotoğrafçılık

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...................................................................................................................... i

Özet .............................................................................................................................ii

Table of Contents ...................................................................................................... iii

List of Figures ............................................................................................................. iv

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1

1.1. Origin and Aim ................................................................................................. 1

1.2. Uncanny Aesthetics .......................................................................................... 3

2. Photographing the Un-Abandonable Spaces ........................................................ 6

2.1. Haunted Houses, Shadowy Subjects ................................................................ 6

2.2. Collective Uncanny ......................................................................................... 15

Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 20

References ............................................................................................................... 22

Author’s Profile ........................................................................................................ 24

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Untitled, Eugene Atget (1921) ................................................................... 4

Figure 2: Untitled, from the Absence Series, Metehan Özcan (2006) ....................... 7

Figure 3: Model of Buffalo Bill's uncanny home, Museum of the Moving Image .... 7

Figure 4: Rachel Whiteread's House in London (1993) ............................................ 7



Figure 7: Untitled, from the Absence Series, Metehan Özcan (2008) ..................... 11

Figure 8: Advertisements for Architecture, Poster by Tschumi (1976) .................. 11

Figure 9: Falih Rıfkı Atay Köşkü flodded (1938) ................................................... 12

Figure 10: Untitled, from the Absence Series, Metehan Özcan (2010) ................... 12

Figure 11: What is Human, James Griffioen, (2009) .............................................. 14



Figure 14: Untitled, from the Remote Series, Metehan Özcan (2012) .................... 16






file:///D:/mete%20tez/final.doc%23_Toc326275645

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1. Introduction

“We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds.”

― Franz Kafka, quoted by Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

1.1. Origin and Aim

When the author looks back to the body of work he has produced in the last 10 years,

he can undoubtedly say that rather than “living” faces, he has been fascinated more with

photographing objects, spaces and places. Maybe this is because he had studied

architecture and interior design; or because his parents worked as real estate agents and he

used to photograph houses for them. Whatever the reason may be, he has been getting

pleasure from photographing the abandoned spaces, objects and collecting old family

photos from the second hand shops.

Photographing the non-living, does not necessarily involve that his photographs lack

stories. Ünsal (2010:13) also confirms this in her commentary for Özcan’s Vacuum

exhibition:

“Özcan's photographs of brightly lit interior spaces tell different stories and when viewed

together, the images can be read as the story of a person who is absent from the

photographs. A person who is not there anymore, who left, who abandoned. The details of

human life, when seen in the emptiness of the space, are almost screaming, demanding our

attention… Özcan writes a universal, simple story in these photographs and I try to resist

becoming a part of the work, wanting to identify and understand, but my failure to do so,

makes me an accomplice to the artist.”

She even calls these photographs as “portraits without people”. But how does a non-living

thing turn into a portrait? One may refer to Walter Benjamin to understand this expression.

He says that “to live is to leave traces”; and adds that the interiors are always imprinted

with the traces of the resident (1989:155). In his review for the Vacuum exhibition, Özakın

(2010:8) also brings up something parallel:

“Even though Özcan’s photographs do not contain a single human figure, we cannot talk

about the absence of the subject. All these images are stamped by the shadow of the subject

who has temporarily or permanently left. The vacuum effect, caused by the subject’s

departure, is an important path for making a sense out of Özcan’s images.”

He calls this non-existent subject as “a ghost incapable of exercising power” and talks

about Özcan’s photographs surfacing the “immanent uncanniness of the space”. His

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13084.Roland_Barthes

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/799260

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photographs rebel against the idealistic duty of photography, which has been assigned by

modernism1. Unlike the abstract ideal image inside the head of the architect, his images are

always impure.

The images from the author’s Absence series are usually of a boundary lost; may it

be the boundary between inside and outside, or the one between public and private, or the

one between time and space. In his review of Vacuum exhibition, Şumnu (2010:11) renders

these images as disrespectful to the boundaries of sterile modern space:

“They remind us that they are not containers that can be sealed off. They once more turn

into a threshold where boundaries between the inside and the outside are again expelled.

Later, they reopen themselves to their old neighbors who are now waiting at the

threshold—the rain, the wind, the dust, the damp, the moss and the insects. So it is that

their short term of repose ends with their new inhabitants. Locations that have become

independent of their inhabitants do not interpret this new situation as an “invasion” or a

“trespassing.” Now, there are no privacies, curtains to be closed, nor doors that must be

kept locked. They are not afraid of joining their bodies with the moss; they are not wary of

having water circulate within them; losing their body parts does not frighten them. Because

there is no boundary and no memory left to protect or defend.”

The author agrees with Şumnu about his evaluation that the ongoing lives of spaces excite

him. He thinks that some spaces are un-abandonable, and they go on living in his photos,

arousing a complex affect about life and death over the spectators.

Of course it is not easy for the author to to distinguish whether this affect derives from

the target of his photographs, from his gaze, or both. In any case, he frequently finds

himself hunting down images that have double connotations. That is the reason why the

author chose to study on Freud’s concept of uncanny (1964), a concept that defines a state

where two opposites –the homely and the unhomely- reside concurrently. Following an

extensive research on the concept of uncanny, the author believes that throughout the

project it will be a good guide for re-reading his photographs and positioning his oeuvre

into a theoretical framework.

For this project the author gathered photographs from two of his series: Absence series,

which covers the photographs of house interiors, and Remote series, which covers public

spaces. In the chapter of Haunted Houses-Shadowy Subjects the author focuses on privacy

and home; and in the chapter of Collective Uncanny he discusses some selected images

1 In her influential book Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Beatriz Colomina

argues that for the famous modern architect Le Corbusier, an edifice of architecture loses its pure conceptual

roots as it is built; the task of architectural photography is to recover this conceptuality and to construct a new

reality (114).

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from public spaces. This retrospective study will help to develop a critical distance towards

Özcan’s photographs, and work more consciously with concepts in his future series.

Of course the analyses will not be unproblematic, because uncanny is not a concept

that can be easily handled. Masschelein (2003) tells that “like the concept of the

unconscious, it is a negative concept and hence internally contradictory, for by virtue of its

negativity, it indicates something which cannot be rationally and consciously thought”; and

that it “expresses a subjective sentiment which cannot be captured in words, for the

generality of language always in a way betrays the individuality of experience”.

1.2. Uncanny Aesthetics

The term uncanny was first pronounced by Ernst Jentsch in his 1906 essay, On the

Psychology of the Uncanny. Jentsch (1995) defines the uncanny as a state or a

phenomenon where one feels “not quite at home”. He also notes that a situation may be

labeled as uncanny by someone, but not for another. For him, uncanny is a product of

"intellectual uncertainty” and grows parallel to one’s disorientation.

In 1919, Freud re-conceptualized Jentsch’s concept from a psychoanalytical

perspective. He starts his brilliant essay with an etymological analysis in German language,

and surprisingly reveals an overlapping between the opposite terms of canny and uncanny.

Freud (1964) argues that these two concepts actually work together, and moreover reside in

each other. He draws a parallel between canny and repression: uncanny is the surfacing of

what needs to be concealed within the canny. Therefore uncanny is “in reality, nothing new

or foreign, but something familiar and old –established in the mind that has been estranged

only by the process of repression” (1964:248). In opposition to Jentsch’s conceptualization

the uncanny for Freud grows parallel to one’s orientation; the more one feels at home, the

more likely he will experience something unhomely. Masschelein (2003) rewords that “the

sensation of the uncanny lies in the fact that something is frightening, not because it is

unfamiliar or new, but because what used to be familiar has somehow become strange”.

According to Freud, the uncanny is basically an aesthetic term. Throughout the past

hundred years, the concept of uncanny has raised reception from every field of aesthetics:

literary theory and criticism, art history, philosophy, architecture and cultural studies

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(Masschelein, 2003). Photography is a modern art form contemporaneous with the concept

of uncanny, and therefore has been influenced deeply by the concept. Moreover, many

theorists argue that the art of photography itself is fundamentally uncanny. The art of

photography has a special kinship with the concept, due to its ability to double the reality,

but not as the same. According to Barthes, photography is the living image of a dead thing

(1981:79); the question about whether the image is living or dead makes the art of

photography uncanny from its very foundation2. Gunning writes that photography was

experienced “as an uncanny phenomenon, one which seemed to undermine the unique

identities of objects and people creating a parallel world of phantasmatic doubles alongside

the concrete world of the senses” (cited in Jervis and Collins, 2008:5).

Due to this “in-between-borders” situation, photography was not widely accepted as an

art form for almost half a century. One of the first photographer who was entitled to be

counted as an artist was probably Eugene Atget (Figure 1), who lived from 1857 to 1927

and left a huge photograph archive of old Paris and Parisian way of life. Morris (1982)

writes that, “Atget was driven by the disappearance of buildings as schemes of

modernisation swept the city. Ignoring the grand new vistas, he set out to record the

2 “The photograph’s immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: The

Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that

it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolutely superior, somehow

eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past (“this-has-been”), the photograph suggests that it is

already dead.” (1981:79)

Figure 1: Untitled, Eugene Atget (1921)

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character and details of the timeworn streets.” His aim was to document spaces, objects,

and people, before they were totally wiped out by the modern way of life; and he was

“discovered” by Man Ray long after his death.

In his 1931 article A Short History of Photography, Walter Benjamin says that “he

looked for what was unremarked, forgotten, cast adrift” and almost always passed by the

"great sights and so-called landmarks"; and he adds that Atget was able to capture things

that “pump the aura out of reality like water from a sinking ship” (1999:512). For

Benjamin, these commonly uncanny photographs of Atget were able to capture the “aura”,

“a strange weave of space and time: the unique appearance or semblance of a distance, no

matter how close the object may be” (1999:512).

Besides Atget, other photographers like Diane Arbus, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Hans

Bellmer paved uncanny stones for the contemporary photographers. One has to note that

these photographers worked predominantly with bodies. Stephen Shore, William

Egglestone and Candida Höfer are contemporary photographers who are more interested in

uncanny spaces. Not only in photography, but in the entire world of art, the concept of

uncanny has been circulating for quite a long time; in visual arts, Cindy Sherman, Sophie

Calle, and Lucian Freud; in cinema, David Lynch and David Cronenberg; and in

architecture, Libeskind, Tschumi, and Eisenman are frequently cited as “uncanny” artists

(Masschelein, 2011).

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2. Photographing the Un-Abandonable Spaces

“For me, the best photographs always inspire curiosity, rather than satisfy it.”

― Aaron Schuman, in Interview with Alec Soth 3

2.1. Haunted Houses, Shadowy Subjects

According to Vidler (2003), as a concept, the uncanny has, not unnaturally, finds its

metaphorical home in architecture: in the house, haunted or not, that pretends to afford the

utmost security while opening itself to the secret intrusion of terror. The abandoned house

photographs definitely constitute a large portion of Özcan’s oeuvre. These houses were

once called “home” by their former residents. According to John Ruskin, in 1891, home

not only provides protection from the forces of nature and society, but provides a peaceful

mental state (cited in Kaika 2004: 265). Kaika (2004) says that in some cases –a leakage in

the pipes, a garbage collection strike, or an act of domestic violence- house ceases to be a

home and shows us what it’s made of, what lies beyond its surface, its “guts”. Buildings

may turn inside out, what they hide inside yet denied may come to daylight: structural

elements, bugs, rats, dirt, sewerage, rust, etc. (Figure 2). And when the home strips down,

what is supposed to remain hidden under the smooth and friendly surfaces of home,

emerges uncannily.

Probably one of the most famous uncanny spaces ever visited was serial killer Buffalo

Bill’s home in the 1991 cult horror movie The Silence of the Lambs. As the detective visits

the house, everything from its façade to the living room seems very familiar, but when she

gets suspicious and follows the killer through a door, a dark and archaic space opens up.

Spectator’s spatial experience becomes distorted4; dark, moist, dirty, smelly and labyrinth-

like corridors takes us further into the hidden guts of the house (Figure 3). The surfaces

move from wall paper to plaster, then to the brick and finally stone. In the deepest core of

the house stands a dry well where Bill keeps his victims before he skinned them alive, to

3 The Missisippi:Interview with Alec Soth by Schuman http://www.aaronschuman.com/sothinterview.html

4 This queer space is impossible to visualize with a few still images, therefore I use an image of the model of

the set to represent it.

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Figure 2: Untitled, from the Absence Series, Metehan Özcan (2006)

Figure 3: Model of Buffalo Bill's uncanny home, The Museum of the Moving Image

Figure 4: Rachel Whiteread's House in London (1993)

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tailor a cloth/skin of the woman she desperately wants to become. As we wander around

this uncanny home, we metaphorically visit the uncanny interior of the killer’s mind.

Rachel Whiteread’s “House” (1993) is an artwork that literally turns the space of the

house inside out; the installation is the concrete negative of an old house (Figure 4). At

home feeling of uncanny commonly occurs when evident boundaries like the ones between

inside and outside, open and closed, or public and private get unsettled or blurred. But

Freud observed that one of the main motives of the uncanny is the problematic relation

with the past (Demeulenaere, 2003). The past eternally haunts us. And the haunted house is

probably the most popular expression of the uncanny. A house becomes haunted if it

remains to be the home of a long-time gone owner. Then Benjamin’s quotation “to live is

to leave traces” (1989:155) can also be read backwards; un-erased traces may not let a

resident die. Jervis and Collins (2008) say that the ghosts prefer their apartments to be

furnished.

Due to the occupation of Özcan’s parents, he has frequently got the chance to visit such

houses. Some of these houses affected the author deeply because despite the dust and other

forms of degradations told him otherwise, they somehow seemed not abandoned at all

(Figure 5). The time seems frozen in some places, but maybe not so much in some tiny

details, like the stain that the sharply folded blanket left due to a leakage on the ceiling

(Figure 6). Who left that room so tidy? It seems that she/he loved this room and belongings

deeply. But then where is she/he gone? Why didn’t they come back? Is he/she dead? Then

who is selling the house, and why not is bothered to take these precious belongings with

him/her? Of course at such times, besides the questions, there is also that feeling that you,

as a photographer, are violating someone’s privacy; yet these fragments of life are now for

any potential purchaser’s eyes to see. There the private and the public somehow mingle,

and you cannot escape the ghost of the past inhabitant as you witness the home he/she

lived. The anonymous subject’s fading traces are always a source of uncanny, probably

because somehow one cannot help but relate to these traces as if they were his/her own.

These cases show that “just as the homely can be rendered unhomely, unhomely places

may become homely” (Blunt and Dowling, 2006: 26).

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Abandoned modernist houses somehow grow stronger uncanny feelings over the

author. Özcan’s parents own a summer house in Bayramoğlu, a seaside resort nearby

İstanbul. His childhood summers were mostly spent there, where there was a modern

housing development in which rich people of Istanbul used to live. These houses and their

furniture usually carried a high modern taste. The glorious days of Bayramoğlu ended as

the Marmara Sea became more and more polluted; many of the houses were demolished or

“redecorated” with a shallow aesthetic taste. After many years, Özcan visited the place to

document the remaining few houses (Figure 7). Some of the houses remained nearly intact,

with personal belongings. These houses, like all modern houses were made to last and

always stay new. Yet they were far away from their past glorious days; they were sadly

“fallen”.

When talking about uncanny states of high-modern buildings, two powerful images

need to be mentioned. The first photograph is from Le Corbusier’s most familiar house5,

the Villa Savoye (Figure 8). Nur Altınyıldız Artun (2012) informs us that the building had

been abandoned during the Second World War years and stayed deserted for decades.

Bernard Tschumi also visited the space in 1965, before the campaign to restore its

canniness. He emphasizes that the villa “was never so moving as when plaster fell off its

concrete blocks” and refers to Bataille’s formulation of eroticism and death (1996:74). The

second image was taken by an anonymous photographer and was printed in Turkish

Arkitekt Journal in 1938 (Figure 9). In the photograph we see Falih Rıfkı Atay Köşkü, a

well-known modern house that was designed by famous Turkish architect Sedat Hakkı

Eldem. The impure images from these canonic houses that claim to be ultimate forms of

architecture an alienating effect especially on people coming from design education.

Heidegger says that house is the most primitive drawing of a line that produces an

inside opposed to an outside (cited in Wigley, 1996:104). There are many cultural forces

that make up this line, but probably the most important separation of the modern house is

with the nature. According to Kaika, “the dwelling places of modernity are hosts of the

uncanny in their very structure” due to the denial of the natural (2004:281). The house

needs natural resources like tap water or natural gas –the good nature- but not the bad

nature –bugs, mold, moss, bacteria or weeds. I feel a strong urge to capture the moment

whenever I see instances where the “bad nature” conquers the home (Figure 10). In such

5 Undoubtedly the most famous house of the Modern architecture.

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Figure 8: Advertisements for Architecture, Poster by Tschumi (1976)

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Figure 9: Falih Rıfkı Atay Köşkü flodded (1938)


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images the nature –understood merely as a passive reserve by the modern thought- invades

the interior and somehow proves how weak our presence in this world is; not a single trace

of humanity may endure nature’s greatness forever (Figure 11). Here the house resembles

an open coffin where spaces just like our bodies are left to decompose.

There are rare moments when nature and culture do not versus each other, but coexist to

make a home (Figure 12). This photograph was taken in Burgazada, at a discontinued

construction. There were no doors or windows and nobody around. A smooth moss was

standing-in for the carpets. The view was extraordinary and the old and dirty couches were

placed neatly in reference to the view. Surprisingly this space had that homely atmosphere

in such an unhomely setting. It is a fact that uncanny works both directions; one can also

sense something familiar in the unfamiliar. Özakın (2011) calls these photographs as a

double recycling of the space6.

As mentioned before, some of the houses that the author photographed were so well-

preserved that one cannot easily tell if they were abandoned at all. In one of Özcan’s

photographs (Figure 13), even though it was abandoned a long time ago, the space looked

so white and sterile. In this frame the only detail that gives this fact away is the large

plastic oil can on the table that looks like as if it fell to the scene from a different universe.

That tiny detail –dirt in a sea of whiteness- somehow triggers an uncanny effect on me.

Wigley (1995) and Şumnu7 (2012) write about modern architecture’s obsession with

whiteness. In such whiteness, the space seems to resist any attempt of leaving traces; and

any foreign element in such a setting inescapably causes an uncanny effect. This obsession

of sterility is a fundamental characteristic of Modernity. Vidler (1992) says that “the

therapeutic programs of the Modern Movement, dedicated to the erasure of nineteenth-

century squalor in all its forms, proposed an alliance between the hygienists and the

architects that would be reinforced on every level by design”.

6 “[Özcan] daha önce fotoğrafladığı “terk edilmiş ancak kendi yaşamına devam etmiş” mekânlardan farklı

olarak, bu fotoğraflardaki mekân “terk edilmişin yeniden kullanıma sokulduğu bir geri dönüşü (daha doğrusu

geri dönüşümü)” çağrıştırıyor. Önceki serilerinde bu geri dönüşümün aktörü bizzat kendisi olan Özcan, bu

sefer “terk edilmiş mekân” ile “yeniden kullanımın meçhul aktörü” arasındaki ilişkiyi fotoğraflamış. Daha

önce kendisinin terk edilmiş mekâna yaptığını (yani geri dönüşümü) yapmış kişilerin mekânda bıraktığı izleri

açığa çıkarıyor.” Özgür Özakın in Boltart – Online Kültür ve Sanat Dergisi

(http://www.boltartarsiv.net/metehan-ozcan-ikinci-el/).

7 “Beyaz duvar bizlere bir taraftan metafiziksel bir şimdiliğin, tamamlanmış bir bütünlüğün ‘evini’ kurarken,

diğer taraftan bizleri evsiz barksız, yersiz-yurtsuz bırakır; evinde oturmamıza izin verdiği, bizleri içeri aldığı

durumlarda bile ‘mekân’ına iz bırakmayalım diye elinden geleni yapar; bizleri bu bütünlüğün bütüne

tutunamayan birer seyircisinden ibaret kılar.” Umut Şumnu in E-skop – Online Dergi (http://www.e-

skop.com/skopdergi/beyazlar-daha-beyaz-modern-mimarlik-ve-bezeme/583).

http://www.e-skop.com/skopdergi/beyazlar-daha-beyaz-modern-mimarlik-ve-bezeme/583

http://www.e-skop.com/skopdergi/beyazlar-daha-beyaz-modern-mimarlik-ve-bezeme/583

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Figure 11: What is Human, James Griffioen, (2009)


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2.2. Collective Uncanny

Of course it is easier to talk about the unhomely within the context of homes. But the

concept of uncanny should not be seen as confined to the private sphere; it can also be

experienced widely in the public spaces. Uncanny is a common feeling about being in this

world. Masschelein asserts that, uncanny is “a blend of psychological and aesthetic

estrangement, political and social alienation resulting from a deeply rooted, disturbing

unhomeliness that characterizes human existence in the world” (2011:147). Jervis and

Collins suggest that “we need to consider the possibility that the uncanny may be a

fundamental, constitutive aspect of our experience of the modern” (2008:2). They simply

argue that uncanny necessarily accompanies the modern condition. Cadava says something

parallel by inserting that the aura, which the haunted spaces possess, proves that “aura in

modernity is experienced primarily in its withdrawal or destruction” (1997:113).

It can be asserted that uncanny is all around us. According to Vidler, the city is the

second best (of course, after the house) materialization of the concept of uncanny: “the

city, where what was once walled and intimate, the confirmation of community has been

rendered strange by the spatial incursions of modernity” (1992:11). In not so different way

that the house mentally gets dressed with belongings as home, public spaces like state

offices, hospitals or schools also get dressed with symbols of collective identities (Figure

14). What appears uncanny in this triplet is the abandonment of Atatürk portraits which

used to identify, monumentalize and nationalize these state offices. The sacredness of

Atatürk portraits is probably analogous with the un-demolished minarets of demolished

mosques all around the country. What appears to be in front of us all along may become

apparent in their isolation. This brings one closer to Jacque Lacan’s formulation of

uncanny; in his analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter, Lacan states that the

uncanny is what lies before us but which we are unable to see (Kelley, 2004). Another

important element in this triplet is the cluster of kitschy images standing side by side in a

state laboratory; these everyday images probably were there for making this unsympathetic

space homely for a laboratory assistant. Once again, a homely element in an unhomely

setting strikes us and leads to a feeling of uncanny. In the children unit in an abandoned

hospital in Cyprus where the space was tried to be made more like home with toys or

curtains with joyful figures; but as Özcan found these items deserted, he could not help but

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Figure 14: Untitled, from the Remote Series, Metehan Özcan (2012)


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think about all these pills, injections, groans and cries that these children endured. These

haunted images accompanied the author all through his visit. A similar photograph was

taken at an abandoned school (Figure 15). This naïve image which was stamped with a

grown up man’s footprint brings me thoughts of vulnerability and violence. Actually the

entire classroom floor was covered with replicas of these childish images; copies of ideal

images of a boy and a girl filled up the whole space. This strong image makes one

remember what it felt like being in the elementary school, and the ways one needed to

develop to escape this feeling.

In another photograph taken in an abandoned truck drivers’ restaurant on a highway the

walls of the restaurant were covered with kitschy wallpapers for making the place look

more homely (Figure 16). The interesting thing about that shot is being able to see the

traces of different time periods layer by layer in a single frame; seeing them altogether

reminds me the volatility of being.

At another instance, three different chairs at the corridors of an office block in Ulus

make up a story (Figure 17). They are not a part of a set; they are just different and

worldly. They simply don’t share the same world with the beautiful pattern of the ceramic

wall cladding that sets a background for them. These chairs appear as if they have a soul.

In another photograph that I took again in Ulus, the abandoned shop’s vitrine is covered

with paper sheets and instead of the signboard stands a lonely fluorescent (Figure 18).

Even if all references that once belonged to that shop were taken away, the memory of the

viewer try and see what was once there; and the bare vitrine gets crowded by an avalanche

of memories.

At some other times, one may suddenly find themselves face to face with surreal

images, images that attack all settled beliefs and thoughts (Figure 19). This photograph

may look more like an art installation, but it is not. These two photographs, which simply

short-circuit the system of thought, were taken in Ziraat Bank headquarters additional

building. The two shots belong to the opposite sides of the same wall; therefore the author

found it relevant to place them side by side. The image shakes the fundamental aspect of

modern space, functionalism; and exposes the bureaucratic mindlessness of the state. What

appears as canny about the stairs is harshly spoiled by a white wall, which is also another

canny element by itself. This image stands as a proof that any combination of two canny

elements does not necessarily make up a canny whole.

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| 19



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Conclusion

“The experience of uncanniness teaches us that the stranger is not someone who threatens us from the outside; rather the stranger is inside us and

our identity is always already contaminated from the beginning.” ― Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves

Throughout the project, in which the author has attempted to re-read and position his

oeuvre, a discussion about the many faces of the concept of uncanny was carried out. The

cited photographs sometimes acted as illustrations and other times they opened up new

perspectives in approaching the concept. Furthermore, this project helped the author to

discover potential ways of constructing fruitful dialogues between the artwork and theory.

These ways are never one way streets; reading theory opens up new perspectives for

evaluating art, and the artworks raise new questions for carrying theory to new places.

Both in author’s photographs and others’, there is always a disturbance of the

conventional, the established and the regular. As Jervis and Collins very well summarize,

the uncanny “suggests a fundamental indecision, an obscurity or uncertainty, at the heart of

our ontology, our sense of time, place, and history, both personal and cultural; and this

uncertainty is both unsettling, even potentially terrifying, yet also intriguing, fascinating”

(2008:2). Actually this is exactly what the art is for; therefore the concept of uncanny has

been and will be a fertile concept for the art of photography.

The project shows that uncanny may affect and haunt everything; nothing is immune to

it. For Royle, uncanny is “never fixed, but constantly altering; the uncanny is (the)

unsettling (of itself)” (2003, 5). That is how even a slightest shift in our point of view may

result to an uncanny feeling; and how we may begin to see things in ways we never

thought possible. On the other hand, when we look for an uncanny situation, it will not

come; it will materialize whenever it is least expected; it may arrive “when one is not

necessarily sure that there is a ‘something’ there to be disturbed by” (Jervis and Collins,

2008). By the appearance of the uncanny we discover fragments of the past within our

present; pieces of unfamiliarity in the “self” or pieces of familiarity in the “other”.

In The Practice of Everyday Life de Certeau brilliantly articulates that “there is no

place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can

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invoke or not”; and he adds that “haunted places are the only places people can live in”

(1988:229). The haunt, of course, is the memory; and memories tie us to the places

enabling a sense of home. According to de Certeau (1984), these are the “unseen

presences”; and apparently art’s fundamental task is to find alternative ways for capturing

these unseen presences. This study opened up new ways to capture the “haunt” in “un-

abandoned spaces”.

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References

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Author’s Profile

Solo Exhibitions

05-07.2010 “Vacuum”, Operation Room, American Hospital,

İstanbulwww.americanhospitalistanbul.com

05-06.2000 "Four", Gazi University, Ankara

Group Exhibitions

16.03-19.04 2012 “Editions II” Elipsis Gallery, İstanbul, www.elipsisgallery.com

20.05-17.06.2011 "Benim de kalbim var" Çankaya Public Art Festival curated by

Jerome Symons, Ankara www.cankayapublicartmanifestation.org

29.04-28.05.2011 "Art of Defence" Nevnesil curated by Deniz Artun, Galeri Nev,

Ankara www.galerinev.com/tr/nevnesil

02.09-24.09.2010 "An Exhibiton on Architecture" curated by Efe Korkut Kurt,

Alanistanbul, İstanbul www.alanistanbul.com

07-09.2009 "Turn ON" curated by Özkan Cangüven, Slag Gallery, NY

www.slaggallery.com

Various media works published in

XXI Architectural Mag

Bant Mag

Can Yayınları

Yapı Kredi Yayınları

Cornucopia

ICON Mag Turkish Ed.

Le Monde Diplomatique Turkish Ed

http://www.americanhospitalistanbul.com/

http://www.elipsisgallery.com/

http://www.cankayapublicartmanifestation.org/

http://www.galerinev.com/tr/nevnesil

http://www.alanistanbul.com/

http://www.slaggallery.com/

Photographing the Un-Abandoned Spaces: Uncanny Interiors -an MFA Graduation Project by Metehan Ozcan

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