Memleket, Emin Özmen’s 15

Emin Özmen’s second photobook, *Memleket*, explores the concept of "homeland" by shifting focus from historical documentation to personal reflection on everyday life in Turkey. The work draws upon fifteen years of travel across Turkey, focusing on moments of togetherness, joy, solitude, and landscapes imbued with tradition. This contrasts with the debut book, *Olay*, which documented ten tumultuous years through themes of tragedy, unrest, and incidents. Özmen views *Memleket* as an emotional counterpart to *Olay*, suggesting that while the first book captured physical events, the second seeks to capture the internal, lived experience within those same historical periods. The shift in focus is motivated by a desire to reconnect with personal memories, place, and identity amidst societal change.

*Memleket* is Emin Özmen’s second photobook. It covers fifteen years of travels across Turkey. The book focuses on the poetry of the everyday, including moments of togetherness, joy, solitude, and landscapes steeped in tradition. The photographer refers to *Memleket* as a reflection on his homeland. The first book, *Olay*, documented ten years of events, including earthquakes, droughts, bombings, student demonstrations, and refugee crises. Özmen states that the photographs in *Memleket* were made during the same period as *Olay*. A specific image mentioned is Cetin facing his goat during milking while traveling to the southeast of Turkey.

The dialogue between the two photographic works suggests a layered approach to historical memory: one documenting external upheaval and the other focusing on internal continuity. The transition from charting national trauma (*Olay*) to exploring intimate geography (*Memleket*) reflects a movement from collective, public experience to personal, subjective meaning. This shift is not merely aesthetic; it represents an attempt to process vast societal change by anchoring it in tangible, familiar elements—the land and everyday human interaction. The use of "breathing moments" as a thematic anchor indicates a strategy for managing overwhelming historical weight by emphasizing pockets of present vitality. The impulse to move away from major cities toward Anatolian landscapes is a conscious act of seeking foundational identity outside of centralized political narratives. This process reveals a pattern where personal epistemology seeks to reclaim agency by prioritizing felt experience over purely documented fact, questioning which realities are prioritized when memory becomes an active pursuit rather than a passive record.