“The images in this collection are part of a broader, personal journey … they form a fragmentary narrative woven together from various bits and pieces of my dreamworld … they are a kind of conceptual-symbolic documentation of my inner life.
As I grow older, I ought to find myself “improved,” more experienced, confident, wiser, etc. Instead, I sometimes find myself growing weary and weak, drained, ever less assured, ever more hesitant. These feelings carry over into the night, where they disrupt my sleep and disturb my dreams. These emotional states often have a distinct visual flavour, and this project is largely an effort to interpret and to externalize the images that come at me, absent rational form, seemingly out of nowhere. … This is my way of processing feelings of self-loss, atrophy, and fear … but also, on a more positive note, these images reflect a simple recognition of life change, a statement of hope, and an expression of gratitude. On my better days, on days with less pain … I go to sleep dreaming of a world re-enchanted, imbued with the Sublime … a world once again enveloped within the atmospherics of the Absolute. Most of these images were created over the course of the past two years, with the generous help and collaboration with friends, family, models and dancers.”
(Attila Ataner)
About the author: Attila Ataner
“I am a Toronto-based photographer, artist and part-time PhD student concentrating on environmental ethics and early modern German philosophy. My heritage is Turkish, although I was born in the small Bulgarian town of Svishtov, located on the Danube River. During the 80s, my family and I lived as refugee ex-pats in North Africa, in Tripoli, Libya. I learned about photography for the first time while attending an international school, the “Oil Companies School [OCS],” for the children of foreign workers, starting in Grade 6. I was very fortunate that, early on, I was given a comprehensive education in core photographic practiced and theory. However, more recently, I have realized that, over this long period of doing photography, my camera was not just a tool for documenting various aspects of the external world, but rather a means of seeking something more subtle: mystery and the ever-elusive glimmers of the sacred. I find a certain solace in the thoughtful engagement with photographic art and in purposeful creative activity. With each personal project I work on, I try deepen and expand a nascent personal spirituality … a sense of meaning from which I was massively deprived in my childhood”
WEB: www.attilaataner.com
IG: www.instagram.com/attila.ataner.photography/
