Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2018
Daily Bread
She did not look up from the dough, and I did not ask her to.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
It was dim inside, the only light coming from somewhere off to the side and falling across her hands and the round of dough in her lap. She was working it the way it has been worked here forever — turning, pressing, turning — for the flat bread that comes off the iron in minutes and feeds everyone.
I had come to make a portrait and found her in the middle of this and understood quickly that the bread was not going to wait for me. So I let the portrait be what was actually happening: a woman at work, head down, the whole shape of her bent around the task.
The face is half in shadow. The hands are lit. That felt right. In a kitchen like this one, at that hour, the hands are the part of a person that is really speaking.
One frame, quietly, and then I stayed out of her way.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Eastern Anatolia, winter 2018. From the ANATOLIA series.
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm · Signed & numbered on verso · Certificate of Authenticity included
If this photograph interests you, write to me directly. I'll answer any questions about print sizes, paper, and process. Studio visits in Istanbul are also available.