Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2018
Do What You Came For
She looked at the camera the way you look at someone you have decided not to be afraid of.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
No smile. No softening. A dark flowered scarf knotted over a hooded sweatshirt, the old and the new layered the way they actually are in these villages now. Freckles across the cheeks. A gaze that came straight down the lens and did not waver while I worked.
It is the most direct look in the whole series. There are people who give you their face and people who hand it over like a challenge, and she was the second kind — here I am, do what you came to do.
I did not try to charm her out of it. The look was the portrait. To soften it would have been to lose the one true thing she was giving me.
One frame, eye to eye. Neither of us blinked first.
— 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.