Ali Besikçi
PHANTASM
24 March - 30 March 2020


“My memory is not particularly good.

A couple of months ago I received a couple of rolls of film in the mail that I had left at my photo lab some time ago.

Everything was as I expected, except for one roll of medium format film.

I had absolutely no memory of taking one of the photos on that roll while the rest was totally familiar. The more I looked at the photo, the more I got lost. I couldn’t understand where or when it was taken.
It didn’t look like anything I’d shot before.

The image is out of focus and blurred in only one corner where a man seems to be walking towards the camera and a woman follows him. Their clothes recall the ‘60s, and their faces are unclear. The place looks like the entrance of a mansion and reminded me of a post-funeral scene, or maybe a wedding. Even though I continued looking at the images for weeks, I couldn’t understand where it came from.

I was at war with my memory.

Photography had turned against me.

My efforts at capturing the situation had turned inside out, leaving me with confusion and ambiguity. A moment of clearness gave way to scepticism. Once again, I started summing up on why I photograph, on the scenes and subjects that interest me. I often found myself attracted to the in-between situations in the landscape of isolation and detachment in society. There is something that fascinates me about how we handle those moments of daily purgatory.

I don’t usually photograph people but when I do, I found myself in some ways looking for their “ghosts”.

This time, they seem to have found me.”

Ali Besikçi (b. 1997, Istanbul, Turkey) graduated from the Italian Scientific Highschool of Galileo Galilei and started, in 2016, his studies on Arts, History and Cultural Heritage in the University of Bologna. His interest for photography started during these years.

In 2017, Ali released his first photo book, In Between published by Ofset Yapimevi in Istambul. In 2018 he founded Zone Magazine, a contemporary photography magazine that aims to cultivate a variety of dialogues between artists and audience, as well as supporting them with printed and online publications. The first issue was printed in Spring 2020 and it’s available at Zone Magazine website. Ali also published a collection of 31 photographs in photo zine form, in collaboration with Fabrika Zine & Fail Books.