The Empire Project, is pleased to announce the launching of Emin Altan's new book "Chernobyl" along with the subsequent exhibition of a selection of works from the series, on Saturday the 25th of November, 2023 at The Empire Project's new exhibition space in Kadiköy Yeldeğirmeni.
Emin Altan has devoted his photographic career to documenting the residue of humankind's ambition on nature laying out scenes of destructive transformations from various parts of the globe. His previous body of work "Chaosmos", traced humanity's incessant ambition to dominate nature and the 'other', throughout the world. Underscoring how humanity has gone blind to not only the function of nature in which it resides but also to one another which helps illustrate a process where humans eventually provoke and are the perpetrator of their own extinction.
"Chernobyl" is Altan's second book and body of work. Through the course of his journey to document the twisted remains and the detritus of mankind's ambition Altan is pulling a tighter focus on the lasting wound of one of humanities biggest calamities. The photographic works are accompanied by the writings of Günther Anders, Slovaj Zizek, Michael Löwy and Martin Cohen, Emin Altan, Öner Kurt and Gülçin Yapıcı, Mehmet Özdağ, Eda Sezgin, Foti Benlisoy, Pınar Demircan, Osman Özarslan, Özgür Gürbüz and Cemil Aksu. This body of work with the addition of the text point out that the disaster is not just Chernobyl, or even just nuclear, but also highlights the different dimensions of a system that progresses by constantly creating disasters, forever devouring its young.
In the city of Pripyat, which has now been commodified as a "tourist area", "it was as if time had frozen". Nature is slowly taking back what it had lent to humans, and the forest was surrounding the city. Trees were growing inside the buildings. The branches, which were hanging on the ground due to the weight of the fruits on them, were swaying in the wind, and the wild horses were watching the intruders from a distance..."
The book was designed by Esen Karol and edited by Cemil Aksu. The Chernobyl book, published in English by Manifold and in Turkish by Ceylan publications from their Pollen Ecology Books series, discusses what happened with both photographs and articles, questions and warns us about the actuality of the nuclear disaster, and calls us to duty.
The Book launch and exhibition will take place on the 25th of November and will last till the 16th of December 2023, at the Empire Projects new exhibition venue located in historic Yeldeğirmeni, Kadiköy, Istanbul.
Emin Altan was born in 1962 in Çanakkale. The artist, who began his career as a ship engineer, made a radical decision to complete his twenty-five-year career with a world tour of five years, thus he began to write a visual story in which he looked for traces of his childhood among the ruins of collapsed civilizations. Interested in photography since the '90s and producing projects in this field, Altan joined IFSAK and Photography Foundation aiming to connect Turkish photographers with international photography circles. He took part in international photography festival's regulatory bodies. He joined Anders Petersen's workshops and eight years after the completion of his "Life Sciences" workshop, he started shooting. The artist continues his practice in Istanbul.
