New Photo Series by Sedat Suna: Political Bodies

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Sedat Suna is an award-winning photojournalist. He records what happens in conflict regions, sports organizations, events and protest demonstrations, he photographs the natural flow of life.

Since June, Suna has been running a photo project about people with political tattoos in Turkey and taking their photographs.

Politic Bodies in Turkey
Photo story by Sedat Suna/EPA-EFE
For more pictures and caption check —> https://t.co/8mT3vKbTpe @epaphotos pic.twitter.com/p2WzCzGzK6

— Sedat Suna (@sedatsuna) September 13, 2019

Suna says that when he follows the news and social media, he now sees more and more people with political tattoos in comparison with previous periods and adds that it is how the project has started in the first place:

'I have started seeing them more'

"The elections that we had over the past years and dozens of rallies held within this frame have become effective in launching this project. I have seen that political tattoos at protest demonstrations are on the increase. And the people I have photographed have got their tattoos in recent years. The supporters of political movements and political parties taking an active part in the field have started to use more political symbols in comparison with previous years. That was how I got the idea in the first place."

Suna tells us that he has reached out to people with political tattoos that he knows personally and get to know on social media since the end of May, adding that two tattoo artists that he knows helped him a lot in this process:

"I have photographed 11 people so far. I have photographed the portraits of people with political tattoos and their daily lives. As far as I seen, the most common political tattoo is that portrait and signature of [Mustafa Kemal] Atatürk. The tattoo artists that I talked to have confirmed this as well, but I cannot give an exact information or rate about it.

* A tattoo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

"Apart from that, the tattoo of Prophet Ali is one of the most common ones. A person that I photographed told me that "he had this tattoo due to Prophet Ali's stance towards injustice.

* Azadî: Freedom in Kurdish

"When I talked to them about my project, they said that they would happily support the project. Almost everyone except for one or two of them let me take their photos without putting forward any preconditions.

"As for the ones who did not let me, they refused it either because they did not have time or they did not want to be photographed directly."

Indicating that he wants to continue his project that he started in June, Suna says, "I want to photograph the tattoos with unusual figures." (HA/SD)