Artist Statement
In 2008, I began photographing the rapidly changing landscape of far-flung, densely populated regions on the suburban outskirts of Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey.
These photographs don't depict the ancient palaces, mosques, and ruins of guidebooks. This is the everyday Turkey of a rising middle class, heavily influenced by Western Europe and the United States. This is also the Turkey of displaced migrants, shantytowns and gentrification. This is the site where they intersect.
Mark Slankard’s work has been exhibited widely, including such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Rotterdam International Film Festival, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Columbia University, Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, Visual Studies Workshop, SoHo Photo Gallery, and Wexner Center for the Arts. His work is also featured in the spring issue of Exposure, as well as Robert Hirsch’s textbooks, Exploring Color Photography and Light and Lens.
Slankard received a 2011 Creative Workforce Fellowship from the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and a 2011 Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Award. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio University in 2002 and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Indiana University in 1996, where he also studied photography. He is a 2002 National Graduate Seminar Fellow of The Photography Institute at Columbia University. Slankard is currently an Associate Professor teaching photography at Cleveland State University in Cleveland Ohio.
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