21 June 2022: 10×10 hosted a salon with photographers Sabiha Çimen and Bieke Depoorter at Magnum Foundation in Manhattan.
Sabiha Çimen‘s first book Hafiz (Red Hook Editions, 2021) is the culmination of three years of photographing girl’s Quran schools in five cities in Turkey. This is a subject that she knows very well since she herself attended one of those schools as a teenager, with her twin sister. The title refers to one who has memorized all 604 pages of the Holy Quran. Historically, the task of memorization began during the time of Muhammad. The individual process can take up to four years and is usually done by girls ranging in age from eight to nineteen. Turkey has thousands of Quran schools. This world has never been captured with so much intimacy before, as only Çimen can do, because she is part of this culture. Every photo reveals a different aspect and gives us a deeper understanding of the daily life and the dreams of these girls.
Sabiha Çimen (@sabakhayr), born in Istanbul, is a self-taught photographer, focusing on women, Islamic culture, portraiture, and still life. Çimen graduated from Istanbul Bilgi University with an undergraduate degree in International Trade and Finance and a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies. Her Master’s thesis on subaltern studies, which includes her photo story titled “Turkey as a Simulated Country,” was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2019. Awards include W. Eugene Smith Fund 2020, Light Work Artist in Residence 2020 and Canon Female Photojournalist Grant 2020, among others, and she participated in the 2018 World Press Photo Foundation Joop Swart Masterclass. Çimen became a Magnum Nominee member in 2020, and lives in Istanbul and New York.
In October 2017, Bieke Depoorter met Agata in a strip club in Paris. Over the next three years, the women dove deep into a collaboration, creating a small alternative universe that served as a container for them to explore questions they each had regarding identity, performance, and representation. Agata (self-published, 2021; 2nd ed. 2022) tells both the story of a young woman using a photographer to find some sense of identity, and the story of a photographer using a young woman to better understand photographic authorship and herself. These intertwined narratives are threaded via a combination of images, letters, and notes, but what defines the dialogue is the ever-present reflex of self-awareness and self-reflection. The result is a project that never lands on any sort of conclusive truth, instead highlighting the slippery nature of truth in situations where power, responsibility, and control are in a constant state of flux.
Bieke Depoorter (@biekedepoorter) received a master’s degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. Three years later she was made a nominee of Magnum Photos, where she was named a full member in 2016. The relationships Depoorter establishes with the subjects of her photographs lie at the foundation of her artistic practice. Accidental encounters are the starting point, and how these interactions naturally develop dictates the suite. Several recent projects have been the result of her always questioning the medium itself. Depoorter has won several awards and honors, including the Magnum Expression Award, The Larry Sultan Award and the Prix Levallois. She has published five books: Agata, Ou Menya, I am About to Call it a Day, As it May Be, and Sète#15. This year, Depoorter started her own publishing platform “Des Palais,” together with Tom Callemin.
A big thank you to Kristen Lubben and Susan Meiselas from the Magnum Foundation for hosting this salon.