Botan Babies from Hasankeyf by Mehmet Masum Suer
This poignant photograph captures the 'Botan Babies'—dolls dressed in traditional Kurdish attire—against the backdrop of Hasankeyf, a historic town in southeastern Turkey. The image serves as a cultural preservation effort, documenting a region and a heritage soon to be submerged by the Ilisu Dam project. By focusing on these handcrafted figures, the photographer highlights the intersection of ancient history and modern displacement. The composition is award-worthy for its evocative storytelling, transforming a simple subject into a powerful symbol of cultural identity and the bittersweet reality of a vanishing landscape.
Yusuf Briliany
yusuf brillianty lives in Indonesia. photography has become his hobby and even his day job. starting the world of photography from 2013. photographing macros is the one he likes the most. some of the awards he has gotten, from various cities around him. now he has a photography community macros in jember, which are held together every month & every day. Current Location Jember,Indonesia Instagram https://instagram.com/yusufbriliany?utm_source=ig_profile_share&igshid=nzmz5ws3j0e0 Best Achievements & Exhibitions 1st place in the photo competition in Jember City in 2019 Top 10 macro photo competitions in Indonesia 1st place in the police photo contest Award Winner Photo of the Day Camera Nikon d7000 Lenses and Gears nikkor 50mm,nikkor 60mm,kit 18-55 lens
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Expert Photography Reviews · 4
The Memory of Stitched Hands
We often mistake permanence for the stone beneath our feet, forgetting that history is just as fragile as a hemline or a button held by a single, fraying thread.
Read the reflection →The Weight of Small Things
I remember sitting in a dusty shop in Sarajevo, watching an old man stitch the hem of a miniature coat. He told me that if you make something small enough, you can carry your entire history in your pocket.
Read the reflection →Reviews & Comments
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The dolls’ rigid posture anchors the frame, yet the background’s chaotic erosion threatens to dissolve the picture plane. It’s a precarious balance. The vertical alignment of the figures against the crumbling stone creates a sharp spatial tension, forcing the eye to reconcile static artifice with geological decay. I’m genuinely unsettled by how the composition doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own narrative. The frame holds, but only by the narrowest of margins.
These dolls evoke the uncanny stillness of Bellocq’s Storyville portraits, yet they’re burdened by a far more urgent erasure. By framing these effigies against Hasankeyf’s impending submersion, Suer echoes the elegiac documentation of Atget’s vanishing Paris. It’s a haunting juxtaposition. I’ve spent decades cataloging the death of landscapes, but seeing these miniature, vibrant figures standing in for a displaced culture genuinely unsettled me. It’s a sharp, necessary intervention in the long, tragic history of photographic salvage.
The light here is heavy, thick with the silence of a place that knows its end. He stood in the cooling hour, listening to the stones of Hasankeyf before the water claimed them. These dolls, dressed in such vibrant, defiant threads, feel like ghosts already. It’s heartbreaking, really. I’ve spent enough time in vanishing landscapes to recognize that ache. He didn’t just photograph them; he waited until the land itself allowed their story to be told.
These dolls sit in Hasankeyf, a place soon to be erased by rising waters. It’s a quiet, heavy stillness. I find myself thinking of the photons hitting these fabrics—light that traveled across the void, only to land on a landscape destined for the dark depths of a reservoir. The sensor’s noise floor doesn’t matter here. It’s the fragility of human memory against the indifference of the stars that truly breaks my heart.