Memento Mori (2014-2016)

Memento Mori is a Latin expression meaning “remember death” or “remember that you have to/must/will die”, and its orign goes way back to Ancient Rome. In art, artistic or symbolic reminders of mortality are memento mori. Artists used skulls, skeletons, and other symbols of death in paintings, sculptures, and many more to remind people that they are mortals. For example, in paintings artists pictured dancing skeletons or placed a skull (or bones) with a flower, a beautiful woman, a young man, a sand glass, round model of the earth, books, and etc. . In this photography project, I am inspired by these paintings that have used memento mori to remind mortality. Instead of using or placing actual memento mori (such as a skull) in the scene, I choose to use my own X-rays (which are showing my skull and bones) with my living body parts side by side/on a single photograph to show mortality. One living body and its memento mori are in the same photograph side by side. And also, I wanted to show unseen and seen in one photograph. Seen and unseen ‘death’ that is inside us. P.S. 1: I shot this project for a group exhibition named “Inside out” in Turkey in 2014. At that time, it was consist of three photographs. After that exhibition, in 2016 I re-shot this project and made some alterations. P.S. 2: This Project’s two photographs are featured on Musée Magazine’s 17th Issue Enigma, 2017. Link is https://view.joomag.com/mus%C3%A9e-magazine-issue-no-17-enigma/0504992001496884179/p186?short (2014-2016)