Well-Swept Yard

Begüm Yamanlar   Begüm Yamanlar, untitled (1/3), from Zone Series  Begüm Yamanlar, untitled (2/3), from Zone Series Begüm Yamanlar, untitled (3/3), from Zone Series Begüm Yamanlar, an Istanbul photographer and video artist explores the mystery and uncertainty of space, urban space, rural space and objects in indeterminate space.  Her Zone Series consists of landscapes that simultaneously invite and repel, give the viewer easy entrance tempered by doubt or dread.  Each image includes a path running from the viewer's location into a forest until the path curves out of view or disappears in an unexplained fog. Would I step into the scene? In a dream perhaps; otherwise I move on to the next image. But I always return and contemplate, wondering if I haven't detected a whisper from the image. The artist clearly has a catalog of tree trunks, limbs, foliage and fleeting spots of light. She uses these judiciously in a way that pulls the individual ima

"What is art?" is a question impossible to answer. Eduardo Galeano avoided the question and wrote instead about the function of art. My favorite Galeano function is the first one in his Book of Embraces .  The Function of Art/1. Diego had never seen the sea. His father, Santiago Kovadloff, took him to discover it. They went south. The ocean lay beyond high sand dunes, waiting. When the child and his father finally reached the dunes after much walking, the ocean exploded before their eyes. And so immense was the sea and its sparkle that the child was struck dumb by the beauty of it. And when he finally managed to speak, trembling, stuttering, he asked his father: “Help me to see!” Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces , page 17.