WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE

Dates

2022 - Ongoing
Author

Gökhan Tanrıöver
Location Karaburun, Türkiye

Inspired by family histories and tales passed down through generations, a new visual family archive is constructed in the darkroom. With its malleable layers of subjectivity, the work hinges between fact and fiction, lived history and told story.

Inspired by the ever-changing family histories and tales passed down through generations, Waiting to be a Flower Underneath the Fig Tree is a body of work that hinges between fact and fiction, lived history and told story. Set in a small Aegean village scented with fig trees and saline, this is where three of my grandparents were born and from where they have since moved away. Caressed by the waves and the gentle tides of the sea, it is a landscape dotted with abandoned villages whose histories are entangled with the expulsion and compulsory population exchange across the sea, the rebirth of Narcissus and the ultimate demise of Echo.

Stepping into the territory as an outsider partially anchored to it through familial bonds and equipped with the camera as my recording device, the space becomes a stage for me to wander and (re)interpret, (re)tell and visually form these stories laced with magic, mythology, hyperbole and truth. Returning to my darkroom, new sediments of subjectivity are layered over these increasingly malleable and fragile narratives, allowing me construct a new visual family archive.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Chasm: Portrait of my only surviving grandparent. With her advancing dementia she struggles recognising people that were once dear. A method she has adopted is focusing on the stranger’s eyes to see if they are likely to be related to her, making the assumption that those with brown eyes are not.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Days of Famine: Reliant on the harvest of the land, stories of desperation of the older generations as a result of crop viruses and sudden weather changes have filtered down until today.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Ascent: The quaint village where once anonymity was not an option is experiencing an endless expansion of new builds in place of the rubble of the homes that once were, bringing new people from all over and across seas.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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In Preparation for a Sight Unbound: An ordinary apparatus used for preparing and serving food -a sini- at times is a decorative heirloom passed down through generations. This particular one came with an account of a ritual with blessed water, partaken by an ancestor to have a visual access to someone else’s past memory.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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An Attempt to Gaze Upon Oneself: A portrait of a family member distorted by the water collected from the fountain of Narcissus in the village where three of my grandparents were born.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Echo's Revenge: Echo, a cursed nymph, was another resident on these shores. When she fell in love with Narcissus, she was unable to tell him how she felt as she could only repeat the last words spoken to her. Many versions of her story exist, including one with a reference to the Great Deluge when she was forced to swim. Having escaped the advances of Pan, she now feared the lust of Poseidon.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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The Well of Desired Outcomes: Dotted across the mountains are small villages with stone-walled homes, churches and wells so deep that their bottom is hardly perceivable. Since their abandonment they have only been visited by looters, mourners and readers of events past. Now long dry, the wells only hold sediments of past wishes made and dust from the eroding walls that surround them.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Bound: When my grandmother realised she had lost her wallet her niece suggested that they should bind the demon’s phallus, a ritual to allow the retrieval of stolen objects by spiritually punishing the guilty party. The next day I found her wallet amongst the geraniums by the entrance to her home.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Lidya: Portrait of my niece in an afternoon spent meandering the shores to which we had never been before despite its proximity to the village.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Poseidon's Offering: Endemic to the Mediterranean Sea, Posidonia oceanica, colloquially known as Neptune's grass, refers to the Roman god of the seas. On an overcast and stormy day I entered his waters and allowed his grass to caress me with each undulation of the waves. Understanding that the untethered grass, now wrapped around my ankles, was his offering to me, I accepted it and returned home.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Siren's Respite: The chalky outcroppings by the shore where my grandmother used to rest after working in the adjacent tobacco fields with her family. In the summer months she eased her fatigue with a refreshing dip in the Aegean.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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The Scars You’ve Left Behind: My grandmother had many suitors in her village. Upon deciding not to marry one of them due to his temperament, she was kidnapped by him and dragged across a thorny field. The following days she was rescued by her father and the perpetrator was eventually imprisoned. To this day my grandmother carries the physical scars of that ordeal on her legs.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Estrangement as a Wedding Gift: A well to reference my grandmother's experience with a curse that was put on her, presumably by the family of the man she had previously been engaged to before marrying my grandfather. A few weeks into their marriage, the newlyweds found the severed head of a large animal decomposing inside their well - allegedly a part of a known hex used to dismantle new marriages

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Cephalic Rupture: The detached head of a tombstone found in my parents’ garden sparked the retelling of the story when my great-grandfather’s life was spared by his neighbour. During the War of Independence, the villagers were suddenly pitted against each other. The neighbour, struggling to turn into an enemy, gave away the plans of my grandfather’s decapitation and hence saved him.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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The Ethnographer: The local Ethnographic Museum, to which I had never been and had wanted to go for some time, turned out to be founded and run by a distant relative of mine. Here I am surrounded by portraits of people that once were - those that I will never meet and those with whom I unknowingly share my heritage.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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The Dust of Paths Taken: This is the dust that had accumulated over the windscreen of the car as I travelled between the sites of the village throughout my stay there - the index of my journeys taken during my days of wandering in the landscape to which I am partially anchored.

© Gökhan Tanrıöver - Image from the WAITING TO BE A FLOWER UNDERNEATH THE FIG TREE photography project

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Waiting to be a Flower: Narcissus, a hunter from the surrounding mountains, was punished by Nemesis for the way he had rejected the mount nymph Echo. The story goes that he was eventually transformed into a flower. This endemic flower was cultivated by my grandparents for many years. On an overcast day, I lay naked inside the fountain of Narcissus, waiting to be a flower.