from the Black Sea: Melih Dönmezer and Alexandra Şoman

Melih Dönmezer is a Turkish photographer living and working in Eskisehir, Turkey. Melih works both with film and digital cameras to create atmospheric and conceptual portraits and landscapes. In case of analogue photographs, after printing or scanning his negatives, he then edits them further, adding layers and so could be described as a mixed media artist.

 

Melih's images are never quite what they seem at first, and engage the viewer by drawing them into a world he creates with his camera. Sometimes he achieves it by the simple addition of colour to a black and white image, or by removing entire sections of image; in one series of portraits he removes or obscures the faces of his subjects, and in another series of landscapes he removes a section the shape of a droplet from the centre of each landscape. Melih uses these techniques to manipulate the composition and context of a scene and by doing so he creates unique imagery. The cameras he enjoys using the most are Wizen SM111and Zenit ET.

You can find more of Melih's photographs on his page and on flickr.

 
Alexandra Şoman is a Romanian photographer born in Timișoara, currently living in Cluj-Napoca and studying psychology. Alexandra takes digital photos and often arranges them into diptychs and kaleidoscopes. The subject she explores most often in her recent work is city life and interactions between people and public spaces.

Through the use of long exposures and by placing her subjects out of focus, Alexandra renders the experience of urban alienation and captures fleeting signs of human presence in otherwise empty streets. A recurrent theme in Alexandra's photographs is the question of identity in a big city - people only appear in passing, they do not seem to own or inhabit the spaces that they live in, but merely travel through them. 

Alexandra's photography is prevalently black and white, and when she uses colour it's frequently the glow of orange street lamps and headlights that deepen the feeling of non-belonging of humans lost by the roadside and in the city streets.

You can find more of Alexandra's photos on her page.