Melissa Mey
Melissa Mey once again freezes the world for us through her own eyes. With the details she captures, she creates an opportunity to look at our familiar world from a different perspective. The simplicity of her narrative language allows the viewer to imagine beyond the image. In Mey's hands, an everyday object or a mundane space takes on a dramatic form.
Mey's confined frame offers an unexpected perspective, extending the compositions beyond the boundaries of the photograph and continuing in the viewer's perception. This is accompanied by the relationship and balance she establishes with light and color. Melissa Mey captures what often goes unnoticed or overlooked by ordinary gazes through photography.
At the moment when the play of light creates graphic harmony in the composition, she reveals these elements with the appropriate angle and timing, and freezes the instant when time is sent into immortality through its own movement. All of these unveil what we refer to as emotion or history.
Melissa Mey completed her undergraduate studies in Fine Arts majoring in Painting and minoring in Sculpture at Marmara University from 2000 to 2004. She completed her master's degree in 2007.
She started her journey in the art of photography with an analog camera at the age of 9 and continued for many years with analog and compact cameras. Since 2005, she has been working with DSLR cameras. After a period of quietly pursuing photography due to her university education and painting endeavors, she returned professionally to the art of photography with a special jury award and the title of "special gaze" she received at an international photography competition she participated in abroad.
Mey's photographs are featured in numerous private collections and have garnered great acclaim for their distinctive style. Since 2010, her works have been showcased in Turkey's most important contemporary art auctions, and she has participated in several group exhibitions. In May 2011, she held a solo exhibition titled "City Traces," which consisted of reflections and graffiti-focused works that served as traces from her exhibition travels and cities.
The most significant characteristic of Mey's photographs is their originality, as they embody the traces of the era without deviating from the classical understanding of photography. Furthermore, the artist strives to make photography an art form on par with other disciplines through monochrome and limited edition prints.
In addition, the artist has had several publications. In 2016, her photo-project book "The Little Prince on My Skin" was published, followed by a translation of "The Little Prince" in the same year. In 2019, her book "Stories that Teach Language" was published by İnkılap Kitabevi and translated into Turkish, English, Italian, Spanish, and German. In the same year, her Turkish-English aphorism book titled "Salai" was published by Sola Yayınları. The project "Güccük Pirens," a rendition of "The Little Prince" in the Gaziantep dialect, was released in 2021.
Mey teaches "Art History" and "Great Composers and Masterpieces" courses at Maltepe University, and she is pursuing a second master's degree in Cinema and a qualification in General Art in Italy at the same university. Outside of her extensive photography travels, Mey resides and continues her work in Istanbul and Florence.
