Ali Kazma, 2013.
“Arşivden fotoğraflar”
Photographs from the archive. Courtesy of the gallery.

“Books resist and channel out the noise of the world. When I read, the constant, oppressive murmuring of the world is replaced by a clear voice coming from a substantial source.” -Ali Kazma

Currently at Galeri Nev, Istanbul is the first photograph exhibition by Ali Kazma in Turkey: “Book”. The works in the exhibition were compiled from the archive of Ali Kazma comprised of more than eight thousand photographs taken in libraries, bookshops, print houses, bookbinderies and many other places related to books by curator Régis Durand.   Alongside the exhibition, a book with Régis Durand’s text on Ali Kazma’s work will also be presented to the audience. Photographs organized around thematic categories by Régis Durand invite the audience to reconsider the production processes of books and the nature of places at which readers and books meet.

Ali Kazma, 2013.
“Arşivden fotoğraflar”
Photographs from the archive. Courtesy of the gallery.

According to Régis Durand, Ali Kazma whose art is about work as such only in appearance aims to make the activity of reading visible through photography. His focus on the materiality of the book is of course a way of reducing the strangeness and alterity rooted in the nature of books.  But it is also a way of bringing the work into a world with which Kazma is familiar, that of production, know-how and precision.  The book photographed by Kazma is not an empty or anonymous shell, it is a flesh-and-blood object that lives in the particular biotope that is the library, where it has its assigned place, a place that makes sense in this ensemble, and does not consist in simply occupying a certain space. Ali Kazma’s materialist vision of the world of the book dialectically refers to what grounds it, that is to say, the inner life of books and the energy of knowledge.

The exhibition “Book” will be on view through October 26th.

For more information on “Book” visit Galeri Nev, Istanbul