İREM SÖZEN - SEA MONSTER

“'Sea monster', or how to let instinct and imagination recapture their rights, how to not wait for the image, how to also use hearing and sense of smell to direct the gaze. Simple and precious like a childhood memory, this reconstructed series is a discreet elegy to the freedom and uncanniness of the sea at night, a place of darkness, silence, and faint noises, of secret movements and a slightly disconcerting sensuality. 
....

Sözen succeeds in suggesting different functions for different viewers by freeing herself from the moment the shot is taken –from any chronology or context- and by distancing her intimate memory and range of emotions, which are nonetheless at the heart of her images. Photography becomes first and foremost a surface of projection, an object of interpretation. It no longer bears the imprint of the unequivocal. Shattering all timeliness and points of reference helps imagine other units of place and time, thereby ‘fictionalizing’ the subject. İrem Sözen produces collections of images and visual essays, with her 'Sea monster' offering the persistence of a dream and the fragility of doubt.”

 

* Excerpt from the text by Geraldine Bloch, Camera Magazine, 2018