In Turkish, the word gurbet refers to the suffering caused by forced exile. Yet, the term seemed fitting to describe those inhabitants experiencing this feeling within their very own city, Istanbul. The city is a sprawling landfill of memory, governed by a past that refuses to pass, a melancholic dark matter that snakes, infecting people, lodging fragments of nostalgia behind their necks, causing stiff necks from always glancing back at the bygone era. 

Photographic film was, for me, the perfect medium to reveal this unique connection with the past and the ghosts surrounding it.