[-empyre-] Intro from The Red Hookian, that is Mustafa Ziyalan

[Mustafa Ziyalan]

https://www.instagram.com/theredhookian/

I was shot at. I was in bomb explosions. That was in Turkey.


I watched "Blood of the Beasts" by Georges Franju, “Carnival of
Souls"
by Herk Harvey and "Der Todesking" by Jörg Buttgereit. In Austria
I saw
 Hermann Nitsch’s works in blood. In Germany I saw the works of
Gerhard
Richter.



In United States I saw photography of Francesca Woodman. I thought it

was about (self)erasure, among other things. I watched "Decasia" by
Bill 
Morrison.  I worked with HIV+ individuals. What ultimately
reminded me
of transience, disintegration, decay and mortality was 9/11.



I experienced the Salton Sea, a phenomenon I had seen in Bill Viola's

videos before. I took photographs. Then there was
Hurricane Sandy. I was
 in Red Hook then. Cars were moving in the storm
surge. I started taking 
photographs again, this time with my Android
phone, and posting them. I 
wandered through places, abandoned or still
inhabited, above or below
 ground. I wandered through subway stations. I
took in the palimpsest of 
grime, stains, paint and posters.



More recently I saw the works by D*Face.



I have been using software decidedly less evolved than Photoshop:
Gimp
and GraphicConverter. I have been mainly going with what the image
yields. I have been trying and tinkering, leaving quite a bit to chance.



https://www.instagram.com/theredhookian/

My images are attempts to reconstitute and move beyond things, even if
they stumble and fail. I think it is important that I use a phone to
take photographs.  That is the closest to capturing a glimpse while
moving past whatever I choose to photograph. It is unobtrusive and
discreet. This is important when you are taking a photograph of a detail
in an elevator or hallway in the projects, in a subway station or in a
SRO hotel.

What the digital camera of the phone is able to capture from what you
see is where you start. You may crop the image, change its brightness
and/or contrast. Details and colors change accordingly. Where do I stop?
When I see something as far removed from the original as possible,
still, without becoming nondescript again. There seems to be a spot
between the familiar and over-processed, where I pause, I think.