As the day silently retreats like defeated armies, yielding to the sovereignty of night; I take refuge in the dream of you once more to avoid vanishing away amongst the melancholic phantoms of the city running around in a desperate hurry.
Your vision drags me around in this city ignited by tired lights while I hopelessly keep on looking for you with a stuttering hope inside. Hoping one day I will have the chance to tell you about them, I steal the features of unknown faces passing by me.
I settle in all the corners of the streets holding on to a happy coincidence of running into you. I hide and wait under my umbrella at desolate bus stops. Who knows, this time, it may be you stepping out of a rain-soaked bus. Or I trail behind the purposeful high heels vibrating the pavement. Will this uncontrollable longing come to an end if I whisper your name?
I do not whisper and you do not look back. I am desperately aware of the impossibility of finding the real you amongst all those vague faces I have been looking at. That is when I stand catatonically right in the middle of this city with a huge emptiness inside me. The dream of you becomes a vision, turning me into a phantom in this city.
About the project:
My relationship with this world has always been painful. I could never fully settle into the world, and it has never embraced me. Feeling like a stranger throughout my life has been the most familiar and exhausting feeling. It is as if something is lacking in me all the time.
For as long as I’ve known myself, I have been in search of this “thing” that I don’t know. No matter where I am, no matter what I do, a part of my mind has been obsessed with it.
These images are reflections of my humble visual imagination about my surroundings while wandering the streets with my camera, in the hope of filling this obscure deficiency preventing me from the joy of life. These photographs have no particular order, have no beginning and no end. They can be seen as fragments from the odyssey of my desperate search.
About Murat Harmanlikli
Murat Harmanlikli, based in Istanbul, is a street and portrait photographer deeply inspired by human presence, literature, and the layered narratives of urban life. His journey into photography began in 1996, but it was not until 2007, after a hiatus due to his master’s studies and professional career, that he fully immersed himself in the medium, developing and printing his own black and white photographs in his personal darkroom. Since 2016, he has continued his photographic practice using digital cameras, maintaining a strong focus on the poetic rhythm of the streets and the emotional depth of human expression.
His work is rooted in quiet observation, empathy, and storytelling. Strongly influenced by literature, he believes that the inner worlds of fictional characters and the visual atmospheres created by novels can be just as powerful, if not more so, than photographs in shaping imagination and reflecting a personal vision. As a modern-day flâneur, he approaches walking through crowds not only as a way of connecting with the city but also as a source of endless photographic discovery.
His work has received international recognition through awards and features from platforms such as LensCulture, The Independent Photographer, Life Framer, IPA, All About Photo, and Eyeshot Magazine.
He is currently working on a long-term book project titled Istanbul, in the Flux of an All-Embracing Moment, a visual exploration of the city’s fragmented yet deeply interconnected human stories. [Official Website]
