Bahar Yurukoglu

These images focus on the intimate narrative that unfolds in the preserved house museums of historical and cultural icons. I am interested in the transformation of the ordinary object to a priceless museum piece and the heavy history they imply. The preservation of a private residence into a public museum creates a space unlike any other, a space that can only exist at that moment between those four walls. By using documents, fragile memories, and a contemporary perspective historians and curators re-imagine and memorilize a person and their private space. The personal relics and collected memorabilia anthropomorphize to create a haunting, transcendent and beautiful portrait. By photographing these houses I am exploring a temporal space between past and present, fiction and reality. My photographs look at the role of myth, absence, nostalgia, and memory as it relates to the retelling of history and the human experience.

© Bahar Yurukoglu