Akif Hakan Celebi is one of our favorite photographers, his multifaceted cultural background reflects in the richness of his stories and wonderful details of his works. We featured his unedited series Love In Paper Packages on Fluffer#2. Discover more curiosities about his life and work in this interview with the Turkish-American author.
When did you start working as a photographer?
Even though I have attempted to become a photographer a couple of times before and gave up , I can say 2004 was the year for me to decide I would be a full time photographer.
You are a Turkish-American and live between Hong Kong, Istanbul and the USA. Which culture influenced your creativity mostly?
For the last 3 years I am based in Hong Kong mostly. But as I was growing up I have spent my childhood and teenage years in Istanbul, and then moved on to USA for the college .
That’s where I have decided to become a photographer.
But even then I was very influenced by the Asian culture and that reflected into my work. Many people looking at my USA work thought I was Japanese and didn’t think that I was creating all these works in Florida.
I knew eventually I would end up in Asia and tried Japan for 6 months. Although the inspiration and my works were very satisfactory for myself, I couldn’t make a living there because of the language barrier. Hong Kong was the perfect place that would fit into my lifestyle as it had amazing street backgrounds, the type of women I would love to shoot and most of all they mostly spoke English so I could also get by financially as I was creating.
It is a great city with a lot of inspirations and amazing people.
The titles of your works are very interesting: all your works are very accurate and every “presentation” detail is important, actually: I noticed that music plays on every series on your official website, seems like you want to bring us through a new experience, from the choice of the title to the music featuring and empowering the mood of the images: how do you put all the elements together, and why?
I am a big movie buff and inspired by the moods certain movies brought into my life. When I create photos, I always see the process as if I am creating a movie, so my photo stories consists of 30-40 photos rather than a few and have fluid continuation.
The music helps that mood. When I watch movies I try to see every scene as a photograph, and when I shoot photos, every photograph for me becomes a scene. With this kind of presentation I am somehow satisfying my yearning for creating movies.
You switch from interiors to exteriors very easily: where do you find yourself at ease, which are your favorite work conditions?
I love both. When you are shooting interiors you bring out the character of that person or the photographer with the objects scattered around. Viewers can find clues there and can build ther own story. When you shoot outside, you are also introducing the character of that city or area, that’s why I tend to shoot wide angle to include all these clues in my photos. I try to make the viewer to spend a little more time looking at my photos and take them to a different world. Because that is also how I like to look at photos too. It is kind of self-masturbation.
Works like “Sodomy In Hung Hom” and almost every series you shoot in interiors narrate a sexual and sexy intimacy, a -private dimension- you enter. Sometimes playing with your models, sometimes disappearing completely behind the camera but sometimes even showing your physical presence in a mirror or showing a part of your body: so that you works balance changes constantly from a voyeur attitude to the interaction: innocence and complicity in eroticism. Tell us about this changing attitude in A.H. Celebi’s erotic shoots.
I am a human being and sexual innuendo through peeking into someones private moment is exciting. In my personal works, I tell my models that there will be nudity before hand but however they feel at the moment of shooting is up to them.
It can be innocent, emotive, plain or hardcore. That particular moment and the way they feel at the time decides that, I just go along with it and send the message through my photos.
There is no room for being secretive, everything will be out there and shared. This is the risk you take when you really want to create works that are more powerful and outside of the norms.
Sometimes that can come back to you with bad rumours but as an artist I have learned to live with them and for me creativity is more important then how some people might think.
The presence of me or part of my body in my photos help bring another dimension into those works, so the viewer is not only the viewer but can feel they are a part of the moment themselves.
I like this feeling so I don’t mind being part of the creative process physically as well.
How do you choose the models?
Usually I meet them randomly or through social media. I choose girls that give me different energy when I see them. My sense of beauty is maintained in the eyes of the person. That is the most interesting feature for me in someone.
So when I am actually in the process of shooting, I never see the nudity but concentrate on the eyes and the mood through gestures.
Male nudes are very difficult to find in photography, I found some in your work: how do you approach a work of male nude? Is it different from female?
I am not so much experienced in that actually. The males who got nude in my photos either they chose to be nude themselves or in one case I pushed them to be naked cause they are my very close friends so I can be really direct 🙂
I appreciated the welcome statement on your website «striving to go beyond established styles and widen the boundaries of photographic expression» is the leitmotif of your production, a sort of contemporary photographer’s “mission”?
I had this statement on my website since I have started photography in 2004. I have read an article with a Japanese photographer at that time and that article kind of paved the way for this statement and the direction of my works.
Akif Hakan Celebi | website
