20/20 presentation

    My subject for 20/20 presentation is old photos, which have a glimpse of memory and the intention to capture a special moment for the ones who once owned them. 
I have always been interested in photos, not just in photography and technical image creation, but also the driving thinking process behind the aim of capturing a moment within a visual platform. In daily life when the professional approach is not distinct much, for ordinary people photography does not seem as an act of art. Most of the time they do not care if the composition in the frame is adjusted, if the lightening is right or actually the use of flash kills the feeling of that place. The main intention is saving the moments they think that are special, as clear as possible, like stopping the time for a moment and bookmarking the ones important for future remembrance.
My mother’s parents were villagers in a small town in Northern Turkey and they have experienced a big war, which was independence war of Turkey. They are members of a generation who witnessed a national poverty and huge loss. After the war they moved to a city nearby Istanbul and started a new life, which was very different from what may have been like as if they had stayed back. When most of their relatives stayed back 2 parents and 3 children found themselves in an environment where they need to learn almost everything from start.
    For my father’s family it is another immigration story. 3 generations before, they were living in south-western flank of the Caucasus, in a region called Abkhazia but in the first half of 19th century they were forced to move out from their country with ships in terrible conditions. They lost so many ones on the way, and the stories that are told for generations are the only way to learn and remember what happened during the exile. With the allowance of Ottoman Empire they settled in a region in north-western part of Turkey slightly close to Istanbul again.
    All the immigration, major changes in life, alienation of being newcomers, instability in the idea of home, created a life view for them based on possible big changes and always being ready to get on the road again. They did have domesticated lives and have been settled down to their places for a long time now but because of their awareness of what is possible to happen, even for me, growing up with their knowledge and experiences, I tend to live my life always expecting big changes good or bad which always seemed very natural to me even if they are very hard to adjust to.
    As if these changes were not enough both my parents lost their brothers when they were around at their 20s. One of my uncle was dead even before I was born and we lost the other one when I was around 12 and he was also living with us and we were together almost everyday. So within a family which has so many stories about ones left behind, lost ones, major changes in life, immigration, family, memories, relationships...etc I believe the most major fact about life is that it never stays the same and we can never think the stability of our current condition and life style is guaranteed and for forever. Our experiences shape us, and with very a big role of these things, it always made me wonder the ways people use to keep their memories alive within a continuous change in a lifetime. 
I have family members who are interested in photos, but not photography. My father had a big interest in taking pictures, especially when my sister and I were little. We even have a huge wooden chest that he especially got it done to store our hundreds of photos and tens of photo albums. For my mother’s father case, he collected and saved everything he can such as photos, money, remaining accessorises, newspaper articles; anything that has a reference to people in his life, the time passed and changes in his life.  They did not care if the photo was a bad one or they were in a bad pose, if there is no composition or that it had been taken in an awful lightening, they kept them all. Because they had very few means, they found them all priceless.
    Most of photos I am collecting have the similar idea behind them, displays very different places, emotions, occasions, times and almost do seem as an illustration of a story. Several of them are 60-70 years old and are also the evidences of the first experience of the people seen in them in front of a camera.
    Looking from a time when getting, keeping and reproducing an image is one of the most easy and also common thing to do, in order to understand these photos, just looking at them is not enough at all. Today the perfection of technique, originality in the idea of the visual or beauty of the colors and light are the things we consider when we value an image. For the photos I collect we need to use a very different view in order to understand what it really means with the context of time it has taken.
    One of the photos shows a young man with an old lady who is his mother and it is the only, one and only photo he has with his mother in it. The only visual reference to once his most valued person in his life. How can we measure the value of such a photo? This one to me is a priceless photo even it is taken with such a low technology camera.
    As an another example, one of the photos show a train window full of soldiers who are about to leave and waving to their loved ones. One face behind them in the train, also a young soldier and actually does not pose for the camera but just looking outside. He is my mother’s brother who she lost. That day she wanted to go to the station but her parents had work to do and they couldn’t be there for him just for that time. They had great memories after as well and this photo came to them after the death of my uncle, one of his friends brought it but whenever she sees the photo she says that she can read the unhappiness from his face and wished she could be there for him.
    Now we have digital cameras, phone cameras, video connections...etc which makes life unimaginably easier and distances bearable but also within all these comfort and the illusion of trust in technology reduced the value of the recorded memories in our eyes. Because it seems and feels so easy and common most of the time it is described as childish or even boring to attempt photographing and recording memories without thinking its visual beauty.
    But what actually makes a photo valuable?