Von Merhart breathes new life into old photographs

TUBA PARLAK

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Artist Ekin Onat von Merhart’s exhibition, ‘Real Fairytales,’ is displaying old photographs with rays of lights at Istanbul’s Gallery Niş. Von Merhart calls her technique ‘mixed’ as her works contain elements of both contemporary photographs and 18th-century oil paintings.

Photography artist Ekin Onat von Merhart colors old photographs through digital methods.

Photography artist Ekin Onat von Merhart has kicked off her second personal exhibition at Gallery Niş with a show that displays her reinterpretation of old photographs through manually applied color highlights.

“I wanted to breathe new life into these old photographs with rays of lights. I reinterpreted these frames photographed by someone else many years ago according to his own taste and knowledge. It is a very common practice to color old photographs through digital methods. What makes my work different is that I applied the coloring manually, which means that I avoided the wide range of opportunities [offered by] technology and used limited means, which pays homage to the fact that these photos were thus made in the first place,” von Merhart said about her works at “Real Fairytales.”

Von Merhart calls her technique “mixed” because the photographs on display are no longer the photographs that were taken in the 1970s, nor are they oil paintings from 1700. The creation of the exhibited works requires use of various techniques.

The images von Merhart used are all related to the Bernegg family that she married into. “When my father-in-law passed away, I obtained a suitcase full of old photographs taken either by him or by his relatives during various trips they made at the time. The photographs also showed the way paved by the family members while growing up,” the artist said.

She said she had been playing with the photographs for three years, trying to figure out how to save them from being abandoned to time as forgotten memories. The exhibition is the end result of von Merhart’s three-year artistic and mental work.

“The photographs taken in Africa were by my father-in-law himself during his 40-year residence in Gabon. I also lived together with him in the middle of the jungles for a while, so although it was not me who took these photos, I feel like I have a personal tie with them because I saw every single vision those photographs bear with my own eyes,” she said.

The Bernegg portraits belonged to real family members, made between 1690 and 1750. “They are not particularly special people, or it is my lack of knowledge. They probably are high aristocrats in the family history that had the chance to obtain senior title, or wives and children of those who bore that title,” she said.

Von Merhart said the portraits served as a means of immortalizing that particular individual, a very common practice at the times, which in a way proved the relevancy of their use as part of her project upon old photographs that included resuscitating old images in a new fashion to immortalize them and what they signify.

The artist defines herself as a concept artist, a definition that forces her to focus on details from life that are worked or reworked along with her material of choice that best suits the nature of the project. She said she did not aim for an enduring relationship with any material or concept in order to avoid the pitfall of self-repetition.

“Contemporary art means the ultimate freedom of expression for me, which I am benefitting from as much as I can,” she said.

The exhibition runs through Oct. 31. Gallery Niş is closed Sundays.

via Von Merhart breathes new life into old photographs – Hurriyet Daily News.