Chronicles of a baby gazelle

Models

Most photographers go through models like they're disposable. Using one for the sole purpose of demonstration. I come from a background (that I have just made up between) of fine arts, having grown up with the pressure of Italian renaissance painters who painted portraits for the models or sentimental and romantic painters who only concentrated on their loved ones making them the central figure of the painting and disappearing behind them. Ainsi it is excrutiatingly hard for me to work with models I don't know that well, I'm not comfortable with them and they're not comfortable with my camera, not knowing what to do, they assume roles and loose their own identity. Street portraits are usually realized with empathy, I connect loosely with the other person and on a split second create a personality for him/her, therefore knowing him/her without actually talking to them. But my pictures are a big part what my model brings to them, my job is to capture them and bring my point of view onto them and nothing more, this is my philosophy even for conception pictures, I let the models have the main idea of the shoot and they help make it possible. This is why all my models are my friends, my very good friends.

In this case my model is more than my friend. She has been by side since our birth, our mothers being close friends from university, we were introduced to each other as 2 years toddlers, as soon as I stepped foot on Turkish soil. Ever since we have traveled through the world, going on different directions but meeting each other along the way. She was in France I was in Belgium, we were 8 but we saw each other every month. I was in Georgia she was in Turkey, she was by my side to discover that magnificent country. We were, we are in the same school, in the same class, attending the same lessons. We are together yet independant, she is my rock, my stand, my muse. She is our yamuk prenses with her sheet white skin and ebony hair. She is my baby gazelle, she is Ceren.