* AFSAD Kontrast Magazine, 2011 After completing the Textile Design Department of the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (IDGSA) in 1970, Ahmet Öner Gezgin went to Germany with a State Scholarship in 1972 and completed his postgraduate training in Experimental Photography and Graphic Design at the Kunsthochschule, Kassel (Germany) in 1977. He attended workshop and seminar studies in Chalon-sur-Saône (France) in 1975 and at the Salzburg Summer Academy in 1981. In 1978, Gezgin took up his academic post as an Assistant at IDGSA. In the same year, he co-founded the Photography Institute. Gezgin became assistant professor in 1987, associate professor in 1988 and professor in 1998. He participated in many collective exhibitions at home and abroad. In 1974 he opened his first solo exhibition titled Objects (Objeler), at Kassel. This was followed by Truth and Fantasy (Gerçek ve Fantezi) (1980) in Istanbul, and Experimental Photography (1980), in Germany (Osnabrück), at the 2. International Art Biennial in Istanbul, Conceptual and Visual Images-1 (Kavramsal ve Görsel İmgeler-1) (1989), and Conceptual and Visual Images-2 (Kavramsal ve Görsel İmgeler-2) (1990) exhibitions. Gezgin has participated in many seminars, conferences, open forums, discourses and symposiums, his articles on photography have been published by the media. […]Read More ›
* Bosphorus Sanat Gazetesi (The Art Newspaper), December 2010 Ahmet Öner Gezgin, who brought the experimental photography approach to Turkish photography, is one of the leading artists in his field. He has served as the Deputy Rector at the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Dean of the Department of Fine Arts and Chairman of the Department of Photography at the same university. Having adopted the principle of forcing freedom and limits in photographic expression, the artist is currently serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Işık University. While discussing what kind of innovations have been made regarding art education in Turkey, we also talked about photography, which is our main concern. I hope you will enjoy this read. E.SEKMEN: In the past, when art education was mentioned only Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts (Academy of Fine Arts) came to mind. Today, the situation has changed. With the opening of private schools, the ways are paved for creating polyphony in art education. Adnan Çoker, who likened the academy to an orangery, said that artists were taken under protection at the academy. What do you think about this? A.Ö.GEZGİN: Adnan Çoker’s use of such a sentence […]Read More ›
Based on Victor Burgin’s indication of the difference between ”finding meaning” and “creating meaning” and his emphasis that this is the most important factor in differentiating the artists who use artistic opportunism and those who use photography as an infrastructure element, could you talk about how you moved towards experimental photography, what kind of efforts you made to expand the boundaries of what can be done with photography, and in terms of suggesting other ways of looking at an image? Actually, the issue of the boundaries of photography and whether it is art or not, which started to be debated in the 80s in our country, was a current issue after the World War I in the 20s and 30s in the West. It is not surprising that discussions began so early; because although photography, is a tool that represents the development process of technology, it has also responded to objective, functional and clear expressions of machine aesthetics which influenced new art movements that have emerged and developed at the beginning of the century and determined their visual language. This process formed a basis for the great changes in the stylistic language of the art of painting. The most important […]Read More ›
* This interview was published in the Art Education Special Issue of AKADEMIST Magazine, August 2007, Issue 9, pg. 74 – 81. As one of the last branches to be included in the arts, what kind of a place did photography take? In historic periods when communities constantly renew themselves political personality, way of thinking, communication and art undergo changes similar to the development of the social structure. Every innovation in the social framework, especially in the field of technology, which shows endless development, affects the cultural context: When writing was first invented in 3500 B.C., when paper was invented in 100-200 A.D., when the printing press was invented in 1454, when the industrial revolution in the 18th century changed mankind’s way of life, when photography was invented in the early 19th century, when we entered the Optical Age, we always faced the same ideas, according to the definition of Karl Pawek: Is this the limit of what we can do? In the 19th century, the invention that most influenced the machine age and determined the development and detected the purposes of the visual communication tool is the invention of photography. In the 19th century, as a brand-new tool of […]Read More ›
* insankaynaklari.com / Interactive interview We chose to start the Photography File that we will work on in the October-November period at insankaynaklari.com İKeyif, with an academician who has set his heart on this profession. With Prof. Dr. Ahmet Öner Gezgin, we talked about photography as a profession, photography education and being a good photographer. How is photography regarded as a profession in our country? In our country, as the role of photography in creating an object of art is widely underestimated and as no investment is made in this field, the perception of photography as a profession is not much different from this situation. The opinion that this profession can be performed by everyone, whether educated or not, is quite common even in our day. What photography has added to your life… In the process extending from the first moment I encountered photography until now, I have succeeded in performing photography that I have dreamed of as a fluid way of coming face to face with the other reality -as in the case of theater- creating my subjective reality, setting up an environment of freedom where, as Man Ray also says, everything forbidden can be done, and being able […]Read More ›
* Milliyet Art Magazine, October 15 1989, Issue: 226 Ahmet Öner GEZGİN, one of the academic members of Mimar Sinan University, Department of Photography, has opened his 4th solo exhibition, within the framework of the International IIth Istanbul Biennial at the Vakko Art Gallery. Here, we present an interview with Gezgin about this exhibition, enhanced by various visual items in addition to photography. In your exhibition, held as part of the Biennial, we can observe the transition of your photography towards three-dimensional work. How do you explain this change? This exhibition, which is part of the Biennial, is not a manifestation of change, but rather a developmental indicator of the style that I have been actively pursuing since the 80s and for which I have made no concessions. Fashion is the symbol of change; there is no continuity. My process has a past and a present. From the factors that prepared the transition from the 1900s to the 2000s, the extensive development of knowledge, the change of social structure, the dizzying, rapid development of communication tools and influences on the artist in an effort to envisage the age of political movements, leading to new pursuits and thus the equipment and […]Read More ›
