Why Fashion Photography? An Origin Story

I didn't start photography from photography. I started from hardware.

In 2004-2005 I was attempting an overclock record. I had dismantled the radiator of a Polo GTI and designed a full custom water cooling system. I made the water pumps myself. I had a copper cooling block custom-produced at an industrial lathe shop in Antalya, giving them my measurements. Later I took the work all the way to liquid nitrogen overclocking. I had built a bridge between my computer engineering training and my equipment fetish.

One day a friend said to me: "Çağlar, let's borrow my brother's camera, let's photograph this work." His brother was a journalist. He came with a backpack. When I saw what came out of it, I fell in love with the hardware before photography. In the bag was a Nikon D200, 14-24mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, and I think an SB800 or SB900 flash. Before I held that equipment, something broke in my head. This is a tool, but it's more than a tool.

That day we shot the overclock attempt with that camera. The same evening I decided to buy myself a camera. The Nikon D90 had just come out (August 2008, the first DSLR to shoot video). I bought it, with the 18-105mm kit lens. At first I shot cats, dogs, birds, mushrooms. I wasn't really taking photographs. I was chasing the sharpness of the machine. I was testing the limits of technology. In those days the photo of a mobile phone was 640x480 pixels, this Nikon had bewitched me. But I couldn't get what I wanted from the D90. I just couldn't love it.

Here the second strand of the story enters. There was something that had been inside me since childhood. Clothes.

Even when I was 15-16, my girlfriends would take me shopping, but not so I could accompany them, so I could choose clothes for them. I would choose, they would try. I had a serious devotion to the Diesel brand. I still do. Diesel, to me, is real Rebellious Luxury. Balenciaga and the like feel like its imitation to me. Diesel is something where it's neither modest nor showy. Characterful. The name of a quality.

Now you'll understand where Rebellious Luxury comes from.

One day with the D90 I started taking photographs of my girlfriends. At that time I was at a serious brand in the IT sector, in a serious position. I was setting up base stations. I don't want to name names, but it was a known firm in Turkey. I had a salary of around 3500 dollars a month. But something was making me restless. I was taking photographs, I loved photographing the human, but the answer to the question of what I was photographing hadn't become clear.

The answer came at Migros AVM.

The first Migros AVM in Antalya was built. Inside, Antalya's first Diesel store opened. One day I went shopping. In the store I saw two young people from Istanbul. It was clear they came from those circles, the clothes on them, their stance, their speech, their gaze. I learned later they were stylists doing window design. Back then I didn't even know the name of the work they did. But I fell so hard for their style and the attitude of the work they were doing that I made my decision in that moment.

I said to myself: "Çağlar, you take photographs. Çağlar, you love photographing the human. Çağlar, you should be a fashion photographer."

And I left everything.

I left a 3500-dollar IT salary. I joined Alfa Color, one of the first photography studios in Antalya, as an ID-photo photographer. Back then it was minimum wage, around 300-400 TL a month. The math wasn't simple. The math was illogical. But for me the only logical thing was this.

A month or two later I moved to Dilek Color. If I take good photographs now, it's thanks to them. I want to say this openly. Dilek Color was the studio in Antalya that gave the most attention to equipment and light. They had dozens of Broncolor lighting kits. They had Hasselblad medium-format film cameras. They had film tap machines. From the outside you wouldn't see a fancy place, but inside there was a European-standard lighting school.

I went there to shoot ID photos. But to every customer who came in for an ID photo, I would sell them 10-15 portrait photographs. Because when a customer came in, I would set those Broncolors on them in different ways for hours, run experiments, develop myself. People also enjoyed it. They would say, "I came for an ID photo but this man made me portraits like art pieces." They loved me, the Dilek Color owners loved me too. May God reward them. Later they entrusted me with one of their branches. For 3-4 years I was the main photographer and manager of that branch.

During this time I kept photographing my girlfriends with my own 5D classic on weekends. Then the 5D Mark II came out. The first full-frame camera in history to shoot video. I bought that too. Back then there was Magic Lantern, no one remembers it now. With the Magic Lantern firmware hack you could turn the camera into a RAW video shooter. I was still a photographer but the door of video had opened there.

One day I said, now I'll do my own work. I thanked Dilek Color and left. They congratulated me, they still support, we still keep in touch. Dilek Color is the place that lifted me to the peak. I won't forget it.

Now you understand, I think, why I became a fashion photographer. But the story doesn't end here. Because fashion photography didn't only give me a profession, it gave me a visual aesthetic.

A rebellious visual aesthetic.

Why am I not a sterile man? Why don't I deliver the softened carpet imagery the client wants? Why am I always pushing my luck a little, putting harder light, looking for more rebellious poses? Because I came from fashion photography. The job of fashion photography is not sterile beauty. The job of fashion photography is to show character. The clothing on a person is not a costume, it is an identity. How that clothing falls, how it takes light, what expression it builds on the model's face, all of it is character construction.

I carry this discipline beyond fashion. When I shoot the lifestyle of a luxury hotel, I behave like a fashion photographer. Because in that scene there are also clothes, experiences, sipped drinks, gazes under sunglasses. They all carry character. They are all narrative.

Same with jewelry shoots. A custom-made ring is not just an object. How it sits on a woman's hand, which surface it shows in which light, next to which outfit it is positioned, all of it is a story. To tell that story, you need the language of fashion photography.

Those two stylists from Istanbul in the Diesel window pointed me toward a profession. But really what they gave me wasn't a profession. They gave me a point of view. That day I understood that the work of someone who can think of person, clothing, light and stage together cannot be done by anyone else.

That's why I'm a fashion photographer. That's why I'm Rebellious Luxury.