A rare chance to hear Turkish photographer Ali Taptik talk about his experiences ‘photographing the local’, he will be interviewed by photographer and lecturer Gavin Parry.

Ali is currently visiting Manchester from his home in Istanbul on the invitation of artists’ ensemble Quarantine as part of their Tenancy programme. He returns to the North West of England, over 10 years after he spent time photographing the people and city of Liverpool for his series Transit, commissioned by Liverpool Capital of Culture 2008.

For Tenancy, Taptik has undertaken a month-long residency in a two-bed home on the border of Manchester and Salford, where he has been documenting the ‘non-human’ neighbours. The Tenancy project, curated and produced by Quarantine, is a direct response to the rapid growth and development of Manchester & Salford. Through a series of artists’ residencies, projects and events, Tenancy is exploring how the cities are changing and what this means for the people who live here.          

This ‘In Conversation’ event is an opportunity to hear Taptik talk about his work in Istanbul and England, and his response to the Tenancy programme. Gavin Parry will also be reflecting on his own experiences of photographing the local, as he begins a project for Tenancy creating portraits of the residents of newly built terraced houses in Salford. His photographs will be exhibited later this year as a homage and a redux of the 1970s June Street series of photographs by Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows – recently exhibited at Manchester Art Gallery.

Ali Taptık is an artist and photographer from Turkey, he is also a PhD Candidate in Architectural Design at ITU. His work explores themes including urban landscape and architecture, the relationship between the individual and the city, psycho-geography and the interaction of literature and visuality.

Taptik’s works have been exhibited in various institutions including SALT, Istanbul; MAXXI, Rome; and the Venice Biennial for Architecture. Taptık has published several books including Depicting Istanbul (Akin Nalca, 2010); There are no failed experiments. (Atelier de Visu, 2012); and Nothing Surprising (Marraine Ginette, 2015). Taptık is one of the founders of Bandrolsüz collective, for the distribution of independent artists’ books. He is also the cofounder of design agency and publishing studio Onagöre with Okay Karadayilar.

Gavin Parry has been a photographer for 25 years and is a senior lecturer in photography at Manchester Metropolitan University. His practice evolves from a Photo Documentary tradition, exploring the relationship between the photograph and the real.

Parry has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Holden Gallery, MMU, Manchester; Fact Liverpool; and Old Rajhagar Mill, Ahmedabad, India. In 2007, his photo book Not Just Another Story was published by Righton Press. Past projects have included Silent Dialogue, photographing small traders and shopkeepers in Ahmedabad, India; and Anatomy Projects with David Penny, which explored issues around representation and the process of portrait making.

Tenancy is part of Meet the Neighbours, a three-year cross-artform project co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme.

Find out more: www.tenancymcr.co.uk