THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF A BRITISH NEW TOWN

THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF A BRITISH NEW TOWN

BY KERIM AYTAC

Kerim Aytac was born in Istanbul in 1979, and grew up in London whilst studying in a French school. Film was an obsession from an early age, and was the subject of his degree studies. Aytac soon found that photography began to offer more creative outlets, which led him to pursue an MA in Photography at Goldsmiths University. His practice is engaged with notions of absence, trace and the psychological and structural codes of the urban environment.
As well as writing about and curating photography exhibitions, Aytac has exhibited Internationally in several solo and group shows, and lives and works in London as a teacher of Film, Media and Photography.

synopsis

This is a project about British New Towns.
New Towns were mostly built, in stages, between the late forties and early sixties to create new urban centres, as well as to accommodate overspill from major conurbations. They are still being built today.
New Towns were designed for “Modern” living. New Towns are very honest about what it is to live “Modern”.
Drive, Shop, and Eat, Drink then Home.
This is a project about how when there is no other poetry, a space will create some itself. A new language emerges that resembles, ironically, the plans and data visualisations based upon which these towns were built.
The ‘Modernist’ impulse results in the abstract within its spaces as well as its art.
A town built based on a plan can come to resemble that plan in surprising ways, but only once the ‘newness’ has faded.

editor's note

Our aim is to disseminate and bring to light telling work of emergent or young photographers.