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Ali Arif Ersen's "Tales" exhibition can be viewed at the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery from December 11 to 29, 2007.

A book has been prepared for the exhibition in both Turkish and English.

Somewhere between the photograph and the painting lies a strange melancholy, a causeless dark feeling, a fragile innocence transitioning from one world to another...

"In fact, looking at a photograph is a simple experience, seeing the ghosts within it, feeling the fears of the photographer, understanding what they want to convey through time. Ali Arif Ersen has an understanding of taking a photograph that is digested like a limb of his body. This is a characteristic he knows he can never get rid of, so first and foremost, he presses the shutter for himself, that's for sure. He always captures the world trapped in that moment with the same excitement, rush, and happiness as in the first time, with a premonition of the uselessness of capturing it a second time. I value this happiness because it makes the photographer's way of intervention unique and singular." Levent Çalıkoğlu presents the photographs featured in the "Tales" exhibition and Ali Arif Ersen's relationship with photography with this comment in the exhibition catalog.

"Masallar" (Tales) presents different expansions in terms of content and technique from Ali Arif Ersen's previous exhibitions. While "Très Americas" and "Sarajevo" are filled with images that shout the existence of many people, in this exhibition, as Çalıkoğlu puts it, he "also gives place to as many ghosts." A mirror turning into a garden of memories, a crib abandoned to death, a tanker resembling a giant coffin, a dark forest turning into a cave to be lost in, a carousel with arms moving up and down like an octopus, a tree trunk twisting like a woman's body, a solitary chair about to be swallowed by a garbage truck...

In this exhibition, Ali Arif Ersen meets photography as a painter as well, he "speaks" with his photographs by scratching, erasing, refining, painting them, changing them, presenting to us another world or a view from this world in a strange melancholy, causeless dark feeling, fragile innocence.

Born in Istanbul in 1958, Ali Arif Ersen, although he studied at the Istanbul DGSA Painting Department from 1978 to 1985, focused on photography in his works. In 2001, he compiled his impressions of the United States into a book titled "Photographs USA." In 2002, within the scope of Yapı Kredi Publications' "Reflections/Dream Traces" series, he illustrated Tomris Uyar's short story book "Güzel Yazı Defteri" (Beautiful Notebook). He then continued his impressions of Latin American cities with the books "Photographs Havana" and "Photographs Buenos Aires," and the Millî Reasürans Art Gallery hosted the "Très Americas" and "Sarajevo" photography exhibitions.

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