Can Gurkan

Title: Introspection

About the Photo:
This series is about the journey inwards into our minds we all take. It emerged as I contemplated my own existence. Where is the self? Who am I and what does it mean to be me? This series was my attempt to express the feelings one might get trying to establish a sense of self. It also aims to bring awareness to mental health problems and it is meant to inspire others in their search of self in a society riddled with anxiety and depression.

The photographs in this series depict solitary individuals in abstracted landscapes, which might be considered a metaphor for their mental state. All the subjects are silhouettes, in a sense they are anonymous, they lack identity. They can be anyone, the viewer, or the way we view ourselves and others. Yet I believe that the mood or the emotions of the subjects can be clearly understood from their body language. The shadows or reflections present in some of the images can be seen as an attempt to look at one’s self. These impressions of one’s own image might be the way we see ourselves, or how we think we are seen by others, or they could be representative of the way we consider the notion of self and contemplate what it means to be.