Studio Osep

Open archive on studio practice of Osep Minasoğlu | 2009

‘Studio Osep’ focuses on the life story and career of Osep Minasoğlu, at 80 one of Istanbul’s oldest living studio and set photographers. The project, the outcome of the artist’s work of 10 years on the biography and archive of Osep Minasoğlu, problematizes continuing relationships of representation for various social positionings within an environment of ‘possibility’ where the past can be challenged from individual points of view.

The exhibition comprises three main spheres – biography, retrospective and video-installation – presenting a systematic integrity of comparisons on Osep Minasoğlu and the transforming functions of photography. Based on a life of 80 years and a career spanning 60 years as a photographer, the Osep Minasoğlu archive is transformed into an exceptional selection via a re-editing of around 6 thousand documents which have survived.

Instead of the experience of a series of re-discovered nostalgic archives deemed worthy of an exhibition, ‘Studio Osep’ offers the viewer an interdisciplinary perspective that aims to investigate the social interruptions of recent history and the complex impact created by these interruptions on the equation of the individual, identity and culture. The exhibition articulates social contradictions embedded in the recent history of the city with minor individual memory and transforming life practices, gaining continuity on a parallel perspective to Republican history.