Ali Taptik was born in 1983, in Istanbul where he continues to live & work. Taptik graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University and is an autodidact photographer. He continued his education in Architecture in ITU with master’s thesis in the History of Architecture with a focus on History of Photography and Representation of City.
His first project “remembering me” was a mélange of autobiographical photos contrasted with urban landscape stills from Istanbul in an attempt to recreate a personal history. Starting with this project most of Taptik’s work was on narratives about the city as well as the relationship between city and the individual.
His second series "Kaza ve Kader" (Accident and Fate) is “about interconnected frames of the experience of accumulated urban realities, it is about the relationships, places, people, emotions and coincidences”*. This series could be considered his initial journey to blurring the lines between the simulacra and the written word, questing for a new hybrid where the images come together to go beyond some didactic document and make a play for prose. A narrative where the relationship between the intimate and the social is one of the key elements. "Kaza ve Kader" was published by Filigranes Editions, France in November 2009. With "Familiar Strangers", a series about the urban structure and the relationship of the subjects of the city with their environment Taptik continued on his work on his hometown. “Nothing Surprising”, the second volume in the series of “novels” that started with “Kaza ve Kader”. “Nothing Surprising” centers itself around the theme of crisis and resistance in urban context.
Taptik also collaborated with Prof. Dr. Tanyeli and Bulent Erkmen on the double book Istanbul’u Resmetmek – Türkiye’ nin Görsellik Tarihine GiriÅŸ (Depicting Istanbul – Introduction to History of Visuality in Turkey). He is one of the founding members of Istanbul based Publisher’s Collective Bandrolsuz (www.bandrolsuz.org)
Current areas of interest is relationship between literature and visuality (cinematic adaptation of novels and short stories), publishing as artistic production, new methods for diffusion and distribution of creative production.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
