Guliz Karaoglan Vural

Biography:
Guliz Karaoglan Vural, studied photography at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. She worked as a photo journalist and a photo editor at Nokta and Aktuel magazines and Zaman ve Taraf newspapers. She wrote travel pieces for newspaper weekend supplements. Vural was part of many group exhibitions. She opened her first personal exhibition with the name “Just Beyoglu” in 2011 at Medya Association where Salih Memecan was the president. She still supports the broadcasting and media world with her freelance works.

She believes, for her the best narrative is photography. Vural doesn’t want to limit her vision by limiting herself to the studio and as a result missing the discovery of the real world.

Exhibition: Bunk
Camera is an entry visa to places where it’s not very possible to go. To witness, document and enrich yourself… To have empathy and to touch….

On the trip I started with the title “Rich Syrians,” I saw that war doesn’t make anybody rich, it only makes everyone poor.

In Sulukule I worked for the project; where five centuries of a Roma neighborhood are being built over by the Housing Development Administration; creating ‘luxury’ housing for Syrians; where once upon a time Zeki Muren, Muzeyyen Senar and other such famous artists used to have their summer houses.

Sulukule, which was demolished suddenly and then transformed into a neighborhood where new luxury houses stand, has only few of its old residents.

Because of their financial situation, it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to live in these houses. Syrians, running from the war in 2011 and were accepting of the idea of living altogether, ran to their help.

History was repeating itself… Settlements in Sulukule started in the 10th century, then during the Byzantium period Romas living in the city were forced to the outer gates of the city known as Sulukule by the Orthodox Church with the claim that they were practicing sorcery and magic. Hence started the faith of Sulukule as an exile place.

It wasn’t easy to enter the house where Syrians took refuge. Their fear of the Assad and Syrian intelligence go as far as using phrases such as “they would decapitate us.” There were houses we got expelled from, but there were also houses we were served coffee even before we entered the premises… But the difficulty of convincing them to take their photos did not change.

‘Vertical lives’’ was going on in houses where fifteen, twenty people stayed and every space was made use of with bunk beds. Despite the verticality, everything seemed to consist of repetitions. Houses were the same as if they all came from one source. Everywhere there were bunk beds, most of the people unemployed, all alone, almost everyone’s name Muhammad. They smoked contraband cigarettes, they refused to give up on their pleasure of drinking mate tea with a strawed teaspoon and enjoying hookah… Everything was the same; but most of all the pain…

These young people reminded me of the “pacuko” characters from the novel in which the Nobel Prize winner, Mexican writer Octavio Paz, tell stories of Mexicans who crossed the Mexican border into the United States and set up new lives: “Pacukos are young lads. You can recognize them by their clothes and behavior. They constantly oscillate between being and remaining… Life, cannot enter into the locked box, it stands waiting outside. This is in fact a life that ended but still hopes that one day it will find the form it already lost.”

The new residents of Sulukue fit very little to the description provided of Octavio Paz…

Now all I have left to do was to tell the stories and the people accurately and to discover the metaphors necessary to tell it all accurately.

Although I didn’t speak the same language with the people I was photographing, I still established an intense connection with them. They opened their homes to me. I constantly drank tea or the sugary syrup like teas from the pot and cardamom coffees. I listened to their stories. I met people who had survived by eating dogs and cats for a whole year in Yarmouk. In fact, many facts were cut out of the final edit.

The Syrian refugees here are almost all educated and trained. Doctors, sociologists, pharmacists, dentists, engineers… Because they cannot get accreditation in the universities and find suitable jobs, they work as dressmakers, apprentices, and doing jobs such as a porter. Those people refused to be Assad’s soldiers had fled both to be murdered as well as murder. They deserve respect for their lives.

Refugee is an emerging concept on immigration. There is no place you stay continuously. When I go for a second time to the same homes, I always found new faces. It wasn’t much possible to see the same people twice. Continuous motion is in place a continuous tide. If you asked me what embodies the refugee, I would say they are “they are the voices of wheels of walking suitcases on stones”. Sulukule does not miss the sound of suitcases. People change, that sound doesn’t.

I didn’t only take photographs as documents. Staying completely away from the artistic elements, without falling into the trap of orientalism or producing ‘pain literature,’ I wanted to contact with the people I work with.

Immigration, as well as being dramatic can also be traumatic. The only thing you take with you when you leave the land to which you entrust your history is the old photographs. I met those photographs in the Syrian immigrants’ suitcases.

Human beings are alone everywhere. I know, my photographs won’t change the nature or existence of that loneliness. But perhaps they will help with the recognition of how powerful that nature is.

This post is also available in: Turkish