Gökhan Tanrıöver
Text and images by: Gökhan Tanrıöver
About the Artist:
Gökhan Tanrıöver is a Turkish-British photographic artist, currently based in Madrid. Following an early medical career he realised his vocation lay in visual arts. He meticulously constructs his photographs using film and prints them in the darkroom, which serves as his personal sanctuary. Often using repetition and alteration between the frames, he considers the roll of film as an event where he performs both with and for the camera, to construct imagery that focuses on personal and collective identity informed by personal history, familial narratives and memory, layering together subjective truths and lived experiences.
After completing his BA in Photographic Arts in 2017 at the University of Westminster, he was selected as a finalist in the Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition 160. His work was shown at Brighton Photo Fringe in 2018, receiving the Photohastings Shutter Hub award, and was also shortlisted for the Athens Photo Festival in 2019. He participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including the RBSA Photography Prize in Birmingham, Mixer Arts in Istanbul, BBA Photography Prize in Berlin, Valletta Contemporary in Malta, Preus Museum in Norway and QUEER Festival in Heildeberg.
In 2017, he was picked to participate in the Travers Smith Art Programme and received their Emerging Talent award, and then again in 2021 when his work was highly commended by the judges. Following his debut solo show at Argentea Gallery in Birmingham, he completed his MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in 2021. In 2022 and 2023 he took part in Hybrid Art Fair as part of Madrid Art Week and was selected as a runner up for the Arteventura Award. In 2023 he was chosen for Fresh Eyes International powered by GUP magazine for both the black & white and the conceptual categories. In the same year he was one of the winners for the Lens Culture Critics’ Choice Award.
Gökhan’s images have featured in numerous publications including Der Greif, Analog Forever Magazine, Source Magazine, Shutter Hub, Photograd and The Pupil Sphere. His work is held in both public and private collections including Travers Smith, Hogan Lovells, Garrigues and the Guildhall Art Gallery, London.
About the Project: Waiting to be a Flower Underneath the Fig Tree
Waiting to be a Flower Underneath the Fig Tree is a body of work set in a small Aegean village scented with fig trees and saline, where three of my grandparents were born and from where they have since moved away. Caressed by the waves and the gentle tides of the Aegean Sea, it is a landscape dotted with abandoned villages whose histories are entangled with the expulsion and compulsory population exchange across the sea, the rebirth of Narcissus and the ultimate demise of Echo.
Inspired by the ever-changing family histories and tales passed down through generations, the series hinges between fact and fiction, lived history and told story. Stepping into the territory as an outsider partially anchored to it through familial bonds and equipped with the camera as my recording device, the space becomes a stage for me to wander and (re)interpret, (re)tell and visually form these stories laced with magic, mythology, hyperbole and truth. Returning to my darkroom, new sediments of subjectivity are layered over these increasingly malleable and fragile narratives.
