Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2016
The Arithmetic of Winter
The sacks were the reason she was out in that cold, not me.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
She was standing against the stone wall with the wheelbarrow tipped beside her and two big burlap sacks slumped against it — the winter's fuel, hauled and stacked and counted the way you count the thing that will get you to spring. Snow on the ground. Snow coming.
I caught her between loads. She straightened up, put her hands together in front of her, and gave me a look that was patient but not idle — a woman with work still to do, allowing a short interruption.
Up here the winter is not a season, it is an opponent. You lay in against it all autumn: the fuel, the food, the feed for the animals. By the time the snow closes the road you are either ready or you are not.
She was ready. You could see it in how she stood in front of all of it. I made one frame and let her get back to the barrow.
— 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
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.