Among the editorial discoveries at Arles is Halil Koyutürk’s I am playing ping pong now. “Ping pong” is the sexual back-and-forth, the orgy of bodies and raw sensuality, in which Halil indulged following his divorce. His latest work, composed over ten years and put together over three, is Halil’s most personal work to date. We see again the dark grains, brutal framing, flash-burned images and unbridled bodies, although this time his own body is the focus of the work. Halil left Turkey for Sweden in the 1970s to escape imprisonment as a political dissident, returning twenty years later for an investigation into the country’s sex market. He began documenting child rape victims in working-class neighborhoods who were psychologically doomed to sell their bodies to survive. Then he turned his focus to transsexuals. The result is a disturbing book, obscene but never voyeuristic, entitled TS. In some ways, I am playing ping pong now is an introspective follow-up to this work.
Read the full article on the French version of The Eye.
