Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2017
Mid-Row
She kept knitting the whole time, needles going, eyes coming up to me and then back down to the work.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
The yard was mud and melt, a stone wall behind her, chickens working the ground at her feet and a dog up on the wall watching everything with more suspicion than she had. Mountains behind, the snow still on them. She stood in the middle of all of it in a white veil and a knit cardigan, making something with her hands.
Nobody up here sits idle for a photograph. The work does not stop because a stranger arrived; the work is the day. So I photographed her the way I found her — mid-row, the wool running through her fingers, half her attention on me and half on the count.
That divided attention is the whole portrait. She is being photographed and she is also getting something done, and the second thing matters more.
— 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.