{"title":"Inventing a Selfie Studio","authors":"Özge Baykan Baykan Calafato","doi":"10.1163/18739865-01603004","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Through a case study of Istanbul’s Foto Görçek, playfully dubbed ‘the world’s first selfie studio’, this article focuses on the changing photographic practices from the mid-1940s–1960s in modern Turkey, which experienced a dramatic political transition during the 1950s with the introduction of the multi-party regime following three decades of strictly secular Kemalist rule. This study explores how Foto Görçek challenged and transformed studio practices in Turkey, particularly during its increasing popularity in the 1950s–1960s, by allowing people to take up Elizabeth Edwards’ notion of the ‘theater of the self’, or when the self also takes on the role of the photographer. Accordingly, the article looks at the affordances of the photo studio as a space where citizens reimagined their desired selves and when new ways of imagining the self were made available to them. Moreover, this study investigates how such new imagined selves in the aftermath of the Second World War served to renegotiate a desired modern Turkish identity resulting from the rigorous state-controlled nation-building process during the 1920s–1930s.","PeriodicalId":43171,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication","volume":"97 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18739865-01603004","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Through a case study of Istanbul’s Foto Görçek, playfully dubbed ‘the world’s first selfie studio’, this article focuses on the changing photographic practices from the mid-1940s–1960s in modern Turkey, which experienced a dramatic political transition during the 1950s with the introduction of the multi-party regime following three decades of strictly secular Kemalist rule. This study explores how Foto Görçek challenged and transformed studio practices in Turkey, particularly during its increasing popularity in the 1950s–1960s, by allowing people to take up Elizabeth Edwards’ notion of the ‘theater of the self’, or when the self also takes on the role of the photographer. Accordingly, the article looks at the affordances of the photo studio as a space where citizens reimagined their desired selves and when new ways of imagining the self were made available to them. Moreover, this study investigates how such new imagined selves in the aftermath of the Second World War served to renegotiate a desired modern Turkish identity resulting from the rigorous state-controlled nation-building process during the 1920s–1930s.
期刊介绍:
The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication provides a transcultural academic sphere that engages Middle Eastern and Western scholars in a critical dialogue about culture, communication and politics in the Middle East. It also provides a forum for debate on the region’s encounters with modernity and the ways in which this is reshaping people’s everyday experiences. MEJCC’s long-term objective is to provide a vehicle for developing the field of study into communication and culture in the Middle East. The Journal encourages work that reconceptualizes dominant paradigms and theories of communication to take into account local cultural particularities.