Eastern Anatolia, Turkey · 2016
The Stones She Kept Warm
She stood in front of her own house with her hands folded and let me photograph both of them at once.
This story imagines, it does not document. It is what the photograph made me feel.
The wall behind her was stone laid by hand, generations of it, a small dark window set into it. She stood square in the middle, a white veil, a dark cardigan, a long printed skirt, boots planted in the cold ground. She did not lean on anything. She did not need to.
There is a way the older women here stand that I have not seen anywhere else — entirely still, weight even, hands clasped low, as if being photographed were a thing to be endured with dignity rather than enjoyed. She gave me exactly that.
The house and the woman had clearly been together a long time. I framed them as one thing, because that is how they read: a person and the stones she has kept warm.
One frame, full length. Then she unclasped her hands and went back inside, out of the wind.
— 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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