From the introduction: ”Istanbul, September 15 2002. This is the first night I sleep at the home of the Kaplan family. We lay beside each other like a rosary, feet next to faces. Me at the end next to big brother Ali, 20. On the other side is dad Hüseyin, 40; snoring. The little ones are tucked into the middle. Above us is the booming noise of traffic, it’s late summer and the air is raw and damp. I tug the blanket I stole from the hotel further up, over my nose, but the bitter cold and the acrid stench of garbage, urine, and greasy food still gets through. Also, beyond that, the highway smell: exhaust fumes, asphalt, burned rubber.
We sleep on randomly dug up carpets and blankets, our rest provided us by the viaduct’s concrete foundation. The night is jet black. I lay awake listening to the sound of stray dogs chasing rats in and out of refuse bins, accompanied by the whispering of people’s feet sneaking past us in the gravel.
I awake to the sensation of sun in my eyes. Hasan, 1, is crying and is offered comfort by big sister Adile, 16. “Günayden Stfn”, says Hüseyin and gives me a broad smile that displays his lack of teeth. He sits up and lights a cigarette while his daughters prepare the food. I’m offered a small cup of tea where the sugar has formed into a thick sludge at the bottom, as well as a whole loaf of white bread. Me, Hüseyin and mum Ayşe eat while the children look on. I insist that I’ll never be able to finish off the loaf on my own, and after much consideration they let the children loose on my leftovers. They throw themselves at the bread, pushing and shoving at each other.
After breakfast they all leave for work. The two youngest – Şehriban, 8, and Aliye, 6 – walk off together to sell handkerchiefs and beg for money. Their sisters Nazlı, 12, Zübeyde, 10, and Aynur, 14 pack bottles of soap water in order to wash the windshields of passing cars. Adile carries Hasan in a pouch on her back, they’re going to go beg and collect herbs. Sometimes, when they stray too far to be able to make it back before dusk, they sleep wrapped around each other in a ditch. Mehmet, 18, who is usually responsible for the collecting of wires and scrap metals for the copper findings, today pick up the drum and the zurna, (a madly howling wooden trumpet) that he’ll bring when he accompanies his father to Fatih, one of the districts of Istanbul, where they´ll play for the crowds. Ali departs for business in Sulukule, the Romani quarters on the outskirts of Istanbul’s old city.
Rather than living in the ghetto, they prefer to sleep under a bare sky where the likelihood of being disturbed is much less. “The ghetto is callous and dirty”, tells Ayşe. “Instead of survival we chose to travel the roads. In Sulukule there’s crime, prostitution, poverty, conflicts. We want a clean life. We want to be free.”
Over the next seven years I return to Turkey and the Kaplan family many times over. I find them through their mobile phone, in various places throughout the country; living in cramped conditions without heat, electricity, clean water or proper sewer systems, in abandoned house skeletons and under the bridge where I first met them. Difficulties with money, health care and welfare rights take turns playing havoc on their lives, and every day is a struggle to keep the whole of the large family alive.
Gaziantep. September 12 2008. The family has returned to their home town, where they now live in a small house. Many of the children have gotten married and had children of their own, and they’re spread out across the country. A new life has been introduced in the form of daughter Nergis, now three years old. They describe how it became increasingly more difficult for them to make ends meet in Istanbul, and that they’ve decided to stay in Gaziantep, despite the city offering little in the way of support.
”We thought Istanbul would give us a better life, but the price to pay for not having a place to stay was too high. On the other hand, you could always find dirty jobs there, whereas here there are few. We’re most in need of health insurance and work you can get by on. I fear getting sick and being unable to provide for my family”, says Ali who just recently got married and had his first child.
Zübeyde has at the age of 17 married and divorced her first husband, a man who beat her until she ran back to her family. I ask her what she wants to do now. “It doesn’t really matter”, she says. “The most important thing for me is to be with my siblings, my family.”
From the foreword by Anders Petersen: “Stefan is invited both as a friend and a photographer and he is aware of the responsibillity this invitation brings. You´ll find his pictures full of despair and tenderness, focusing on the humanity we share. He knows that photography is not all about photography. In the end, it is the encounter that matters the most.”