Nedret Sekban, the prominent Turkish painter in my The Man and The Sea series, was born and raised in Trabzon, an old port city on the Black Sea. The sea has shaped not only the geography of his childhood, but also his inner world and artistic vision. Throughout his life, it has been his constant companion, a source of inspiration, solitude, struggle, and renewal. Known for his powerful and expressive sea paintings, he has spent decades translating the movement, weight, and emotion of water onto canvas. In this series, I turn the relationship inward and reinterpret his lifelong subject through my own medium. Instead of painting the sea, I photograph the painter within it. With these black and white images, I place him beneath the surface and allow water to become both his environment and his emotional landscape. The photographs explore his sensations of relaxation, surrender, and quiet pleasure in the sea. Being enveloped by water, I relate to what I imagine as the prenatal state—an original memory of safety, serenity, and inner balance. This feeling becomes visible in his floating body, suspended between breath and silence. Nedret and I share more than an artist–subject relationship; we share friendship and years of sea journeys together. We have swum in the same waters, watched the same horizons, and observed how light, wind, and depth constantly rewrite the surface of the sea. Our conversations—sometimes spoken, sometimes silent—have always returned to water. This shared experience allows the photographs to move beyond portraiture and become a mutual act of observation and trust. In these images, he is no longer simply the painter of the sea; he becomes part of it. His body drifts, tilts, and releases itself into the liquid space he has spent his life observing from the shore. The Man and The Sea is both a tribute and a quiet collaboration—an exploration of friendship, memory, and the lifelong dialogue between an artist and the element that shaped him.
My childhood memories of summer holidays on the Aegean seaside have formed a deep relationship with water in my psyche. As a child, playing in water gave me relaxation as well as pleasure. I found swimming to be an exciting way of exploring a foreign terrain, an access to a muted world away from the noise of the land. In this quietude and foreignness, I had peace. As I grew older, I came to relate the experience of being enveloped in water to what I imagine humans experience in the prenatal state, bringing out a sense of safety, serenity, and inner balance. Swimming became a way for me to feel what it is like to be free. Being in water to me is a naïve, magical, and sensual experience, reminding of youthful innocence.
In my series Swimmers, I aimed to capture these feelings of people in water along with my own. I chose to shoot in black and white to remove any distraction of the color of water and help the viewer focus on the subjects, texture, and details of the scene, and make it more emotive and dramatic. Despite the constant movement of both the subjects and myself in water, photography makes it possible to freeze a moment within all fluidity, and this is magical to me. I see these photographs as a medium to tell a whole story behind a certain moment when subjects float and hang within a liquid abyss.
Medium: Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle German Etching Paper
Size: 17 x 22”
Edition: 5 + 2AP
To purchase artworks from this series, please contact me via email at nadidegoksun@gmail.com
As an artist, I am inspired by the memories and objects that connect me to my past. "My Father's Toys" is a deeply personal project that explores the cherished wind-up tin toys from my father's collection that played such a significant role in my childhood.
As a little girl, I was captivated by the intricate details and whimsical movements of these toys. However, they were always just out of reach, as my grandmother carefully guarded them while my sister and I watched in awe. These toys represented a world of magic and imagination, and I longed to touch them and bring them to life.
Years later, after my father passed away, I became the keeper of this enchanted collection. Through my photographs, I seek to capture the nostalgia and wonder of these beloved toys, and to honor my father's memory by exhibiting their images.
In my images, I aim to evoke a sense of longing and unfulfilled desire - the feeling that some experiences and connections can never be fully realized. Yet, at the same time, I celebrate the enduring power of these objects to evoke joy and wonder, and the timeless beauty of childhood imagination.
Ultimately, "My Father's Toys" explores themes of love, loss, and the power of memory to transcend time and space. I hope that my images will transport viewers back to their own childhoods, and inspire them to embrace the magic and wonder of the world around us, just as my father's toys did for me.
In my ongoing "Abstraction" series, I embark on a visual exploration of the intriguing world of shapes and forms that often go unnoticed in our daily lives. This collection is a testament to the notion that art is not confined to the grand and ostentatious but can be found in the subtleties of the ordinary.
Within this series, I employ commonplace objects like kitchen utensils, paper tissues, fabrics, geometric forms, plants, and architectural details to create images that transcend their everyday associations. By manipulating natural and artificial light sources, I emphasize the interplay of light and shadow, transforming the familiar into the abstract.
Through these photographs, I aim to awaken viewers to the beauty concealed within the mundane. "Abstraction" invites individuals to reevaluate their surroundings, encouraging them to see, appreciate, and celebrate the often-overlooked artistry embedded in the seemingly trivial facets of daily life. It is a reminder that beauty is everywhere, awaiting discovery by those who are willing to explore beyond the surface.
