19 september 2023, Wouter van den Eijkel
Selim Süme | Transit - A search for aesthetics within randomness
Sometimes, perfection is not what you are looking for because it is too polished or lacking in expressiveness. When Selim Süme saw his son taking pictures, it reminded him of the simplicity of his earlier work. For his new series Transit, Süme has returned to the raw and provocative style of the snapshot. Someone eating a snack, a tangle of cables on the floor, a giant stuffed animal – all shot with a flash, without much depth and with a directness typical of snapshots, effectively making Transit an ode to the everyday. As Süme himself puts it, an "attempt to explore life in all its simplicity and a search for aesthetics within randomness". At Unseen, his work will be on display at the Versus Art Project booth.
The series on display at Unseen is called Transit. I’ve read that you were inspired by your four-year-old son playing around with a camera. Why did this inspire you?
A few years ago, when my oldest son Kerem was around four or five years old, whenever I picked up a camera, he always wanted to take it from me. It was a simple film camera. Taking pictures is fun, so when he took the camera from me, I observed how he captured things. He had a simple way of seeing that didn’t follow any rules. He wasn't really thinking much to be honest. This reminded me of my first series of work (289kd). It was a raw and simple effort from the inside, unfiltered. I found it provocative and wanted to pursue that feeling again.
Selim Süme, Untitled, Transit Series, 2023, Versus Art Project
The word transit implies a transition, moving from one place to the next. Was adopting a point-and-shoot style a transition for you?
I've been traveling back and forth between Istanbul and Vienna for around seven years now. I have a dual-city life. It's not a one-way transition actually, but more like a circle. Coming and going, coming again and going again! There have been transitions in how I produce and think about photography over the years. When I first started doing photography, I used a basic technique. Going back to the beginning felt refreshing.
A snapshot style is imperfect by definition. The flash is often too bright and the cropping is imperfect. Is this series a commentary on contemporary photography, which is often all too perfect?
I can't really answer that question. There was a time when I tried to give long answers to such questions. I delved into these questions multiple times in my Master's and Doctoral theses, in the articles I wrote and the discussions I tried to initiate. Photography and its interpretation involve a network of relationships, mechanisms of representation. But my current work that I'm exhibiting at Unseen touches on something more impulsive. It's more like narrative photography. Like a child picking up a camera and pressing the shutter, it's simple and raw! With its imperfections, it feels childlike and provocative.
Selim Süme, Untitled, Transit Series, 2023, Versus Art Project
A striking feature of the photos in this series is their relative flatness. I assume this is not due to the limitations of the relatively simple camera but is intentional. Is that correct and if so, why did you do this?
That’s a difficult question to answer. All photographs are the result of choices. The moment the shutter is pressed, the type of camera, lens, frame, light, aperture, shutter speed, film, paper you print on and so on. The flatness you see in the photographs is absolutely the result of these choices. It's not a technical limitation. I'm trying to create a bit of reality, a bit of fiction, a visual diary and tell a story. I think this is an aesthetic choice that I felt the story needed. A search for aesthetics within randomness. A visual language striving to be raw, trying to establish a new medium.
The pictures in this series are quite sizeable, measuring 1 m by 1.5 m, and when on display they aren’t framed. Instead, they hang from the wall. Why this form of presentation?
I think it's an ode to the ordinary, the everyday, rawness and errors. It's childlike play that is open to errors within boundaries. Trying to explore life in its simplicity. That's why they're large. The fact that they're unframed is also to lighten things up a bit. I enjoy the feel of photographic paper. Maybe it's nostalgia for the darkroom. In some exhibitions, the pictures are framed. They should be able to change shape according to the situation. Just like life.
Selim Süme, Untitled, Transit Series, 2023, Versus Art Project
Another source of inspiration is the poem ‘Particle Ham’ by Izmir poet Ahmet Güntan. For those unfamiliar with this poem, what is it about and how does it relate to the works in Transit?
There are several works actually. One is a manifesto that Ahmet Güntan wrote to himself and another is a sentence I heard at a workshop by Anders Petersen. Apart from these, it's their poems and photographs. Halil Koyutürk introduced Anders and us. The worlds they created in Stockholm were very ‘excessive’ and impressive. It was fun. It was pointing to urges. It was raw. It was provocative. Ahmet Güntan's poems also had the same effect on me. In one poem, he talks about not forgetting the essence of life. In the last item of his manifesto, he says, "Don't forget the kiddie waiter." This text pushed me to remember my own truths, dreams, urges and laughter, I suppose.
You started working on this series during the pandemic and lockdowns. Were the pictures in this series taken close to home and is this also why some of the scenes are quite mundane and candid, such as a bunch a cables lying on the floor, a woman about to take a bite out of a pastry, someone taking off a sweater?
Yes, between 2020-2022, during the quarantine, I was mostly inside my home and studio in Istanbul and Vienna. The series features portraits of my family and friends and indoor photographs, along with objects around me. I think looking this closely at life also made the work simpler and more intimate.
Selim Süme, Untitled, Transit Series, 2023, Versus Art Project
Continuing along the same line, why did you decide to continue to work on this series after the lockdowns ended?
Being out on the street, going underground, meeting people and producing work in the same form/style feels provocative. We will also be showing some of the post-quarantine productions at Unseen.
What’s your next project?
The story isn't over yet. I want to produce a book for this series, so I will continue to work on the series for a while longer.
