//Unforeseen Serendipity//

UNCANNY ENCOUNTERS

Silva Bingaz, Banu Cennetoğlu, Çınar Eslek, Zeren Göktan, Zeynep Kayan, Melisa Önel

“Uncanny” (Unheimlich) is a concept employed mainly in art and philosophy to describe the unsettling feeling evoked by something that is strange and foreign, yet astonishingly close and familiar at the same time. Uncanniness has ties to a peculiar sense of “déjà vu,” and implies the unpredictable, the unexpected, the unclear, the recalled, and the uncertain. The first encounter with a photograph generates an uncanny feeling. Certain photographs also present a subject, object, or form which can be uncanny, and the photographer’s own approach may render the visual outcome uncanny. If so, does the fact that some photographs strike us as remote or close have something to do with the unconscious? If a photograph can express different meanings to the photographer and to the viewer, how can it be related to the individual memory?