First Look 2024 Artist Interview: Duygu Aytac

We took a moment to dive into the artistic processes behind the artists in First Look 2024 to learn about their process, projects, and what inspires them to create work.

(Panopticon)How did you become a photographer? What drove you to choose art as a career?



(Aytac) To thank me for going to law school instead of studying photography, my father gifted me a camera at my high school graduation. It snowballed from there.



What’s the intended audience for your work, if you have one? What communities are you trying to speak to?


I have been thinking about this question a lot, especially in the context of the Anatolia project I am working on. My old answer would be "anyone who feels as exhilarated by photography as I do" but part of me knows that that is both too broad and not broad enough. The language you choose to tell a story in changes the story so much, and it is ultimately the person you are speaking to that determines your language. Much of the experience of changing one's country is about this, too. Maybe my intended audience are those that are also interested in this exchange between yourself and another being.   

What’s your Photographic practice and Artistic process like?




I say a prayer and step outside. When I come back inside, I stare at the computer for a long time. 



What compels you to choose your subjects? What do you find calls to you? 




I think what usually calls to me is an emotional correspondence. And a warm kind of tension. 



What messages are behind your photographs are you trying to convey?

Photography offers me a complex and inconclusive world. It brings me the kind of jolt that no algorithm can conjure. When I left Turkey in 2015, I was full of political despair and resentment. And I learned that that is a fruitless place to operate from, especially as an artist. Photography, at least the kind that I like, feels like an antidote to that dangerous emptiness because there is no way to achieve it without a curious love for this world and its people. That is partly why the James Baldwin interview quote that "Full With The Question" comes from resonated with me so much. 



What influenced you to create "Full With The Question"?




Two years after I had my child, I started seeing a therapist for the first time in my life. In my family, therapy is seen as something for delicate members of the bourgeoisie, not for tough Anatolian kids like us. Well, I must be more of an Istanbul kid. Between the pandemic, and working an in-person job throughout my pandemic pregnancy, and then giving birth and postpartum, I hadn't taken a photograph in years. And now that I wanted to again, I found myself to be a different person. A simple exercise suggested by my therapist was to write a letter to my photographer self as I would to a friend, and it was helpful. The corny truth is that telling "her" for the first time in my life that I liked her photography enabled me to embark on "Full With The Question" a few months later.


Learn more about Duygu here. All work is available for purchase. Please contact director@panopticongallery.com