Swedish Lessons

Passport Photos of you

For many people, passports are used to as a tool to cross the borders.
Customs staffs are just people who validate the information as their jobs. And the reason to travel is to fulfill exotic purposes and perhaps. After passing through the customs, they may bestow a romantic look forward and imagining the endless horizon. That is the routine usage of passport and the purpose of traveling.

For this group of people who I have taken the pictures, obtaining passport is other than the routine purposes. The reasons to cross borders vary. But mostly, it is out of necessity and no return. Maybe some of them are promised with better future which lies on the other end of the borders, maybe some have to flee from their past histories in order to live in the future and maybe... It is one small booklet, which is ridden with such great expectation.



I would like to document how an individual story squeezed into a 4.5 X 3.5 cm cubical in this project. There will be significant trade off in the process of crossing borders. Despite the subjects possessing a complex and rich histories, they are only seen in their reduced selves. What used to characterize them has changed. Now they are all in the white cubical. Only by being so, do they obtain the chance to be on the other side of the borders.
 


















If I were you: Behind the Scarf Exercise


I spent a year traveling around the middle east (2005 Oman). I would like to see how the world is seen and how I was I going to be seen.

Iran

Yemen

Morocco