A collaboration with URBANAUTICA
Photos by KERIM AYTAC
Sometimes we can absent mindedly suspend time and what we see turns into a smooth and homogeneous landscape, where reference points are scarce if not almost useless. If this way of looking becomes routine then the area may lose its dimensions to the point of dissolving or may become a kind of repetitive scenery, like song that we listen to without paying attention to its words.
The project of the Turkish/English photographer seems to break this type of spell. His images appear as pauses necessary for memory. The use of black and white resets the time and leaves us to contemplate the marginal world which supports the vacuum left by our passage and that of other commuters. So the irrelevant becomes memory and, perhaps, nostalgia. Kerim Aytaç makes us breathe, if only for a moment.
«The trajectory of a commute. A journey of many, glanced at. The travelling city, scrolling, is hard to decipher. Existence seemingly its only purpose, the Commuter sees this space, looking for a story or a memory, but it will not yield. Proof is all there is; proof these spaces need to be tracked and that they need to be there, between home and work, work and home. In this project I sought to encompass the subjectivity of the commuter, through a focus on the ambiguous spaces travelled through each day. The images attempt to reclaim the lost, still moments one easily ignores but that can act as testimony to the state of contemporary existences.»
