INSIDE OUT - Özge Ertürk & Interview
Artist Özge Ertürk
@ozgeerturk
https://www.ozgeerturk.com/
Özge Ertürk (1993) is a self taught photographer. Born in Istanbul and currently based in Berlin.Her work Inside Out is a personal journey that conveys an inner reality from the psyche. Unconscious feelings, memories, thoughts and urges manifest from deep inside into the daily life. This is a way to examine her own sense of perception and unconscious interactions with her surroundings. These photographs are fictional yet real moments, half staged half spontaneous, featuring individuals who play an important role in Ertürk’s theatre of life. The work aims to connect with the viewer, through the symbolic exploration of the body, face, distant moments, and transparent boundaries in atmospheric and ambiguous spaces.
What does your psyche represent for you and how does it translate into your work?
For me, the psyche represents the unconscious and conscious mind, soul, feelings, and instincts. This term was my starting point for developing my imagery series to dig into the role of our unconscious mind, feelings, memories, and thoughts on the way we see things and interact with our environment.
The imagery of the photos is a symbolic exploration, can you elaborate?
Through symbolic exploration and representation, I find myself a space to imbue the meaning of my work which has more individual, abstract, and complex aspects. In that way, rather than reflecting only on my own subjective experience, I want to connect with the viewer with these symbolic visual clues in my imagery series that can also evoke their emotions.
You state that some of the works are staged and some spontaneous, do you plan the ideas of the images before photographing or do you work intuitively?
I primarily work intuitively by following my instincts and going after my curiosity. It's quite hard for me to know what I want to create when I go out and shoot. Most of the time it happens naturally yet subconsciously. However, in my staged works, I sometimes try to push myself more to think about ideas beforehand which can also resonate with the viewer.