[The Guardian] The big picture: men in burqas in search of a better life

The big picture: men in burqas in search of a better life

Turkish photographer Olgaç Bozalp’s playful images examine how migration alters our view of the world

Olgaç Bozalp grew up in Konya, a city in central Turkey. Twice a year in his teens he would make the journey to Istanbul, 12 hours on the bus, just to experience a sense of freedom. “My personality didn’t necessarily fit into a small-town mentality,” he says of those years. As soon as he could he moved, first to Cyprus to study theatre and then settled in London, working as a photographer. “I didn’t move away until I was 19, but I always felt there was something for me beyond those borders.”

Bozalp’s new series of photographs, Leaving One for Another, is a meditation on the extremes of that impulse, a study of the hope and trauma of migration. Many of his pictures focus on the detritus of escape – ad hoc sculptures made of life jackets on beaches, people almost comically laden with all their worldly goods or spilling out of knackered cars. Playfulness leaches into something more desperate.

Leaving One for Another is published by Void (€45)

Continue reading...
Source: The big picture: men in burqas in search of a better life

Feeds culled from https://www.theguardian.com/uk/rss