Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2017
Good Company
She would not put the hen down for the photograph, so the hen is in the photograph.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
I had asked to make her portrait and she said yes the way people in these villages say yes — by carrying on with what they were doing and letting you come along. What she was doing was holding a hen against her chest, one hand spread flat over its wing to keep it calm.
She laughed almost the whole time. Not at me. At the situation, I think — a stranger come all this way up the mountain to point a camera at a woman and her bird. Put like that, it is funny.
The scarf was layered the way the older women here layer them against the cold, pattern over pattern. The hen blinked and did not struggle. She held it the way you hold something that is both livestock and, a little, company.
I made a few frames before it got bored and wanted down. This is the one where they are both looking more or less at me, the woman laughing, the hen deciding whether to.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Eastern Anatolia, winter 2017. 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.