i almost forgot about me. Photograph - Limited Edition of 5

Fine Art Print, Hahnemühle William Turner Paper. "I Almost Forgot About Me" is a photography and video project that tells the dead end of İbrahim Özvariş's inner journey in a complex period. The artist realizes that he is lost while going back and forth between obligations and habits. “Many, many years ago, humanity would listen in astonishment to the sound of the regular beats in their chest, without a clue of what they were. They couldn’t even fathom the idea of identifying themselves with a foreign, unfamiliar object like the body. The body was a cage, and within this cage resided something that watched, listened, feared, thought, and marveled; that something was the soul, left behind after the body had been removed. Today, the body is not an unfamiliar entity. Undoubtedly, we know that the beating in our chest is the heart, that the nose is a hose-like orifice protruding from the body, carrying oxygen to the lungs. The face is nothing more than an instrument panel that records all of the body’s functions: digestion, vision, balance, perspiration, thinking.” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera Not being able to do something you love, which makes you feel good, for a long time, distancing from it, and the pain it caused in me recently led me to question my own existence in life. During a financially challenging period, I went to a job, a duty that I never felt like I belonged to, five days a week. I found myself constantly questioning what I saw, heard, and felt. I thought I had forgotten myself. I disappeared for a while. It was at this point that I turned to photography. During the pandemic, starting with the body, I began to create a series to remember myself. I created this series with photography, thinking that it was the best way to express myself rather than words. The series tells the story of reminding myself to think, to see, to stop.