turkish-greek civic dialogue - AEGEE Europe

REUNIFICATION
PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP
Whenever the sun rises, we get blind with this magical sound of the nature;
light… Light is already on its way to reveal us the friends and foes, the
beauties and the beasts and the good and the evil... Most of the time,
mankind is not aware of this magic he is gifted. Here comes the purpose of
“photography”…
Faruk Akbaş was born in 1959 in Mersin. He graduated from Muğla Business
Administration High School. He is the founder of the Kayaköy Art Camp and
Photography House in İstanbul. He was awarded by British Council and Abdi
İpekçi “Friendship and Peace Prize”, Ministry of Culture of Turkey. He is writing
to Photography Magazine every month. His recent books are “The Most Beautiful
Roads of Turkey” (2003), “Technical Reading on Photography” (2003).
Takis Lazos was born in Athens in 1971. He studied at the Department of
Physics at University of Athens and he continued his studies with a Masters
Degree in History and Philosophy of Sciences, University of Athens and National
Technical University (Metsoveio University). Now he studies Photography in
Athens (Technical Department-TEI). He attended the Photography Club of the
University of Athens (POFPA) to follow the lessons and he is still there teaching
to university students. He has participated in many exhibitions of POFPA. He is
interested more in urban places.
Photography Workshop was led by appreciated photography artists of Turkey and
Greece; Faruk Akbaş and Taxis Lazos and supported by Giouli Mpagietakou and
Mesut Öztürk from Anadolu University as well as Mutlu Ekiz from Kayaköy Art
Camp. Workshop participants took various pictures of the villagers, daily life in
Kaya village, as well as the works of participants of other workshops and festival
scenes. They were provided with technical information on photography, on how
to us camera and how to use light. They went out of the village for photo-safari
and photo evaluation sessions. At the end of the festival, they presented their
works of art at a nice exhibition at the Kayaköy Café in the center of village
square. The exhibition was visited both by all festival participants as well as
villagers of Kaya.
Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe
Workshop participants stayed in the same cottage house and traveled together
on Mutlu’s orange jeep to take photos.
The photos taken by the workshop participants later on were exhibited in Ankara
at the Middle East Technical University Library in February 2004 accompanied
by an interview with Faruk Akbaş. Many university students in Ankara as well
as the Greek Embassy had the chance to keep traces of KayaFest and the
emotions it evoked. Some exemplary photos are available online at the project
website. www.aegee-ankara.org/trgr, www.turkishgreekdialogue.net
A JOURNEY INTO THE HEART
OF FRIENDSHIP
DOCUMENTARY WORKSHOP
“When we started to work on the idea of the festival, we wanted to create
something permanent. Something that would not disappear from the
memories of the history. So we came up with the idea of the documentary
workshop. Through this workshop we would both manage to make this
event eternal and at the same time create something on our own, just like
our festival…”
The workshop on Documentary was led by Michalis Geranios and Özkan Yılmaz
from İstanbul Bilgi University. 10 Greek and Turkish young participants improved
their documentary preparing skills, script writing. All during the festival they
used their cameras and turned the objective to the festival participants,
villagers and Kayaköy itself. They attended the discussions and rehearsals of
other workshops, performances, and trekking under the sun.
The participants also attended the NGO fair and interviewed NGO representatives
about their projects, villagers about the population exchange and their
memories with Greek immigrants, festival participants about their feelings.
With the technical equipment provided by Istanbul Bilgi University, the editing
of the recorded documentary was also done during the festival in the village
directly by the participants.
KayaFest Youth and Culture Festival
85