Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2016
Her Own Winter
She walked out into the snow with a cane and stood in front of the woodpile so I could photograph her, and the snow was nearly to her boots.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
Everything was white. The stacked wood behind her had a thick cap of it; more was coming down, fine and steady, settling on her dark cardigan while she stood. She held the cane in one hand, planted, and faced the camera without any hurry, as if standing in falling snow were the most ordinary thing in the world. Up here it is.
I worked fast. It was cold enough that I did not want to keep her out long, and the snow was getting on the lens. But she was in no rush at all. She had seen more winters than I could imagine and this was just another afternoon of one.
This is the last frame in the series. After all the faces and the work and the stone, an old woman standing in the snow with a cane, entirely at home in the hardest thing the place can do.
— Sefa Yamak, Istanbul-based portrait photographer. Eastern Anatolia, winter 2016. From the ANATOLIA series.
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm · Signed & numbered on verso · Certificate of Authenticity included
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