Portfolio > An Incredible Illusion - and the photographer of this image, Ayhan Ozturk

Gazelles are known as swift animals - some are able to run at bursts as high as 60 mph or run at a sustained speed of 30 mph....They tend to live in herds and will eat less coarse, easily digestible plants and leaves. Gazelles are rather small antelopes, mostly standing 2 - 3 1/2 feet high at the shoulder and are generally fawn-colored.
- Wikipedia

I am struck by the evidence in prehistoric cave painting that the moving world was one of the inspirations for making pictures. Codes and techtiforms, abstract symbols, were inscribed alongside running, playing, bucking animals.

Once the marks were made and meaning was felt, both the action, image and thought empowered those individuals; thus, symbolic thought, self-awareness and abstraction became a part of our history. Paleontologists have described and categorized not only images of animals, but also figurative narratives, codes of identity and gender, purely abstract forms as well as evidence of sheer experimentation. Hence, the world and the self made up their playground of provocative stimuli.

This fascination has been the foundation of my most current body of work titled “Me and the Gazelle.” By using my body and my mind as the common denominator, I have set out to trace the connections between the rote, neurological forces working within the human brain, specifically my brain, and the physical, emotional, and intellectual decisions I might make in relationship to my natural and constructed surroundings, the relationships I have with others, appropriations i have created from those relationships and influences, and my own personal history.

My process is rather experimental and relative to the space in which the work is shown. Perception, memory, instincts, narrative, vulnerability and movement are current themes in this installation.

- Please click on each image to play the moving image. -