[Version française]
Photographer, writer, traveler, committed citizen… Frances Dal Chele is an American woman settled in Paris for more than 30 years. Through her social commitments and expressive art, she makes herself an actress and an active observer of a changing world. Upon that, Frances Dal Chele knows no borders : after France, her heart falls for Turkey some years ago. After many travels and encounters with locals, she decides to cast her lenses over three cities far away from the well-known Istanbul, but standing for key urban cases : Kayseri, Konya and Trabzon. As her book Du loukoum au béton (i.e “From loukoum to concrete”), is about to be published, Istanbeats comes back on her project : capturing the fast moving traditional Turkey towards urban and social modernity, knocking down the walls of unawareness which are still surrounding this country.
Frances, born in United-States, you are living in France for more than 30 years et you are interested in Turkey for several years… shall we tell you bonjour, hello or merhaba ?
I reply to all three with a smile!
Frances Dal Chele by Frances Dal Chele, tell us who is hidden behind your name ?
Someone who has been searching for herself for 61 years ! To be serious, a formerly painfully shy person truly interested in discovering others, a photographer who uses reality as her raw material but who isn’t satisfied with just reality, maybe an artist, certainly a woman whose identity is multi-facetted and a little “fuzzy”.
French-speaking, Francophile for a long time, you became more recently Turkish-speaking and Turcophile. What brought you to get interested in this country and attached to it ?
The first time I set foot in Turkey, it was, like for many people, on an escapade to Istanbul with the man in my life in 2004. My involvement around Turkey as a photographer has to do with questions of prejudice
and xenophobia. These two things never fail to profoundly annoy me – my childhood as the daughter of Italian immigrants to the United States and my teenage years during the ‘60s when Black Americans were fighting for their rights have no doubt lastingly raised my awa
reness over the question of hate / fear of people due to our ignorance about them. In 2005, with the official opening of negotiations between Turkey and the European Union, we began to hear a lot of negative comments about Turkey, containing a certain kind of “racism”. This made me react, which means for the photographer I am, taking my camera and setting forth to discover, encounter and transmit the “real” Turkey (not the fantasized one) as a way of counteracting the comments and ideas aiming to fan hate and fear.
I discovered a country undergoing whirlwind urban and social transformation. Both because of its becoming part of the global economy and because of the will to advance toward European standards on social issues and human rights. My interest deepened because I found a country at a fragile point in its transformation: distancing itself from its traditional identity and not yet fully installed in the new identity being created. And naturally, I wanted to learn how to speak Turkish in order to be able to communicate with all sorts of people rather than being limited to those who speak English or French.
Through the photographer’s lens and the sensitive eye of the traveler you are, what does Istanbul look like ?
A global city, seductive, repellant, fascinating, horrifying, ravishing, harassing, a jewel of orientalist nostalgia set in a nightmare of unbridled urban development. A delicious and energy-draining trap for a photographer. I am glad not to have begun my work on Turkey by Istanbul, because I never would have left it. Every five meters a subject to explore springs up !
« ISTANBEATS, instants and beats of Istanbul », what does that mean to you ?
A heart beating, sending blood pulsing through an entire body. Or, a music of intense instants.
You are leading a project since 2007, intitled « Du loukoum au béton » (i.e From loukoum to concrete), aiming at debriefing contemporary Turkey and the deep change that this « unrecognized » country is going through. What has been the starting point of this project ?
I don’t use quotation marks around unrecognized, because there are so many misconceptions about our old neighbor in the minds of many French, not to mention many Europeans. Their idea of Turkey is often summarized by Istanbul, its orientalist past, Istiklal Caddesi and Taksim Square ! Yet Istanbul does not exemplify “Turkey” any more than New York or Los Angeles exemplify the “United States”. My departure point was, as I said, wanting to deconstruct prejudice and preconceived ideas. Hold up to view the country I would discover, but which I intuitively knew would not resemble the Islamic hell in a backward country depicted by certain groups ! Concretely, I decided to investigate cities in the Anatolian heartland (Kayseri, Konya, Trabzon, Diyarbakir), cities in the body of Turkey, far from Istanbul, the cultural and westernized head.
I wanted to work on the theme of urban transformation because photographing urban landscapes was new for me and because these urban transformations imply social transformations. For that reason, my work on cities rapidly branched out to portraits and interviews of young Turkish citizens.
The esthetic starting point was the decision to introduce a slightly off-key note to the colors in order to echo the process of transformation currently taking place. Also, because I am a fan of miniatures and the way they have of representing an entire world in a small rectangle, I wanted my images to evoke modern miniatures.
From loukoum to concrete… what do you intend to mean with this title ?
Something to do with passage, with transition. As relates to Turkey, the passage from one identity to another, from tradition to modernity. Concerning our perceptions of this country, the passage from a backward-looking orientalism to a truer, more concrete (excuse the play on words !) vision of Turkish reality.
Turks are quite open to communication. I guess you did interesting encounters since the beginning of your project. Can you tell us one of them ?
How to choose only one ?! Even if I limited myself just to the youth of in “from Turkish Delight to Concrete” there would be 15 wonderful encounters to relate. But since I only have the right to one, there was the day I was taking pictures of the new, ultra-modern sports stadium under construction in Kayseri. I must admit I wasn’t quite respecting the “no trespassing” signs. All of a sudden, I noticed a guardian coming in my direction and got ready for a difficult moment. But no ! He had come to invite me to have a glass of tea ! And since Ömer turned out to be the right age (between 15 and 30 years-old), I invited him to be part of the “Young Turks”, which he was delighted to do.
But I must tell you about Yasemin in Diyarbakir. The day before, my small digital camera had been stolen off my shoulder and now, I was afraid to go back into the poor streets in the heart of the city. I didn’t have all the pictures I needed, but I had lost what I call “the innocence of the photographer”, which acts as a kind of protection. In front of a mosque, Yasemin came up to talk to me. I am not religious, but I call her my guardian angel descended from above. For three days she accompanied me into those neighborhoods – they were “her” neighborhoods as a born-and-raised Diyarbakariote. She also went with me along the shores of the Dicle River (the Tigris). Some of my best pictures, I owe to her. She never accepted my offers of remuneration, even though I considered that accompanying me six to seven hours a day was real work.
« Du loukoum au béton » will be soon published as a book. You are presenting your project on the website KissKissBankBank in order to gather enough money to finance it. Everyone can contribute to support your project. How does it work ?
Kisskissbankbank is a crowdfunding site. The person proposing a project sets a financial objective and a time limit in which to reach it. The objective must at least be attained or else the project will “fail” and not receive any of the funds pledged.
Discovering my book project ,and then participating in it if one wishes, are easy. Its page is here: http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/du-loukoum-au-beton
There’s the project description, the idea behind the series, the budget and what part of it the crowdfunding will cover, and, of course, what you get in exchange for each level of contribution (these levels range from €5 to €1250 for my project). In order to contribute, one registers on the site, chooses their level of contribution and fills out the form (please note that if a person doesn’t want to use Facebook to register, it’s not mandatory – they simply register ignoring the proposed link).
du Loukoum au Béton has already done better than its financial goal, which corresponded to one item of the overall budget. It’s a real success ! And I’m so delighted because all the money over the initial goal will go towards the budget item “printing costs”. So there’s still plenty of room for fairy godmothers and godfathers. But they have only until May 30th to wave their magic wands over the book’s crib ! By the way, the book will be published on October 10th.
Is there any other way to help and support your project ?
Yes, at least for people living in France. My editor, Trans Photographic Press, will be launching a traditional subscription in July which enables purchasing the book at a preferential price before it comes out. The information will be on their website: www.transphotographic.com
Frances, it is time to say each other « görüşürüz ». A last word for ISTANBEATS readers ?
Take care ! Prenez soin de vous ! Kendinize iyi bakınız ! And thank you so very much for your interest.
******
To read more about Frances Dal Chele's works :
Personal Website : www.fdcphoto.com
Du loukoum au Béton, Kisskissbankbank crowfunding project
Presentation of her project on Youtube by HLGfilms
Istanbeats 
Brilliant!!!