Old Mosque III (Eski Camii III) / Ahmet Elhan

Eski Camii (the Old Mosque) is one of the last pieces of the series “Places” that Turkish artist Ahmet Elhan has been producing since 2007. Elhan created the works in this series by combining thousands of frames that he shot in public spaces such as religious locations, bars, underpasses and schools. He produces these frames by scanning the architectural structure from a fixed point inside, 360 from left to right and 180 degrees from top to bottom with constant angular shifts. In Elhan’s work, what matters is not the architectural elements of the selected location, but how the visual plasticity of a distinct architectural mass as a whole is used to transform the panoramic image into a different level where time and space are reconstructed with multiple perspective.

Eski Camii is a mosque built in the early 15th century in Edirne, Turkey, the capital of the Ottomans before the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul). Unlike the previous works in “Places”, which were relatively more abstract in form, the artist chooses in this piece to keep the distinct architectural elements of the place like the calligraphy, chandelier and the prayers recognizable. The result is a new, monumental work that carries with it the essence of the “Old Mosque” appropriated from the public realm and reborn in the artist’s imagery in 2011.