When Orientalist Desires Fail #1

Murat Germen

Murat Germen’s background in architecture informs his renderings of space and time in his digitally altered panoramas of landscapes and cityscapes. Having studied city planning in the United States and Turkey, Germen explores the social and cultural impact of booming urban environments, documenting the ever-changing landscape of modern day Turkey and its cultural implications. Merging experimental photography with traditional documentary photography, Germen’s “Muta-Morphosis” series features compressed panoramic cityscapes. Various intertwining, merging elements, such as buildings, create a kaleidoscopic, claustrophobic composition. Favoring scenes of Turkish cities like Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, Germen showcases single buildings, whole streets, and construction sites, capturing the essence of an environment through a warped lens and revealing extraordinary hidden details.