...I have not yet assembled my list as I wanted to answer to myself who my heroes really are and then why. The first question is doable but the hardest part is saying why!
While I'm mulling over my response, Cem you should present your guys ...
Hi Asher,
I knew that this would be a tough challenge, especially for me. The reason is, up until the 80s, I have been ignorant of any photographers out there except for Ansel Adams and the famous Turkish photographer
Ara Guler who was a Magnum member and a friend of HCB and Marc Riboud. I was raised in Turkey where there wasn't much to read and learn about photography in the 60s and 70s. I've received my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, from my uncle as a gift in 1969 and started shooting with it. Everything I did was self taught. When I was 10 years old, I have visited an exhibition of Ansel Adams in the American Cultural Society in Ankara. I can still remember the huge impact those pictures have made upon me. I have spent a very long time there and a particular one I remember was the full moon over some village with mountains in the background (I don't know the title of this picture but it was impressive in many ways). I guess that was the moment when I've started to look at photographs consciously. So obviously,
Ansel Adams is my photographical hero number one, also literally.
In the 70s, I'd go to the library each and every day where they had periodicals such as Time-Life and Paris Match and of course National Geographic. I would immerse myself for hours in them and since I did not read English well at that time nor French, I would mainly enjoy looking at the fantastic photographs. It has never occurred to me that actual people with names were behind those photographs, I did not bother. Besides Adams, I knew one other name, which was Ara Guler. The reason was, he was the defining photographer of Istanbul and I was born and raised there. My early photography revolved entirely around Istanbul as my main subject. So at least in that respect, I have developed an appreciation for the photographs of
Ara Guler. He is my hero number 2.
At the University, I have joined the photography club where I have met a fellow named
Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He was my class mate and a much better photographer than I was. He was also very good in the dark room and has taught me how to develop and print my own pictures. Later, he became a film director and is one of the best in Turkey now. His newest film
three monkeys has won the
best director award in Cannes 2008! So I am very proud of the fact that he had been my friend and mentor in the 80s and has really given me a push into more serious photography. So
Nuri Bilge Ceylan is my hero number 3.
I'll then conveniently skip the 90s during which I have learnt much, much more about photography than ever before although there are no particular names which immediately come to my mind as my heroes. Except for maybe Henri Cartier-Bresson. I had developed a liking for most of the Magnum photographers during that period.
So finally, I can mention a few names whom I could call my current heroes.
Enter
Martin Parr. This guy is amazing and his pictures are mind boggling in simplicity and blandness but still oh so good. I really like how he makes the mundane and the excessive something so special.
The Belgian
Stefan van Fleteren has blown me off my socks when I saw his exhibition last year in the photography museum of Antwerp. His bigger than life portrait of lonely and old people living at the fringes of our society has grabbed me right there and since then does not let me go.
And there is more, maybe I'll add them later. Thanks for being patient and reading so far.
Cheers,