Dilan Bozyel

Whenever I miss the time I lived in London, I remind myself of the lovely people I work with in Turkey. For example, musicians whom I shot the album covers of; by speaking the same language and understanding each other profoundly, I transform their music into an eternal second. In 2014 a band of four beautiful men, Multitap, called me to shoot their promo images for their new single. I did a lot of shoots before, and many times danced front stage at their concerts. Therefore, I went to our meeting with rhythmic steps like Heid.

When I listened to their single Ait (Belong), we just looked at one other quietly in he room.

It was such a personal song that reflected so much of us; I wanted to stand up, applaud gradually and congratulate these four beautiful men.

When we got to the visualisation phase of the song, we started to question how much we felt as an ‘outsider’ in the city we lived in, because the lyrics were pushing us to towards more thoughts. Maybe our different attitude, our love for colours or our fixation for free- dom or only our courage were separating us from the majority of the population. While we walked in this pretty city, we felt like an ‘alien’, a stranger who didn’t belong here and it made us feel even lonelier. Lead vocal of Multitap, Selim Siyami Sümer said “ASTRO-NAUT!”. Yes, we were feeling like astronauts in this city. Even though the colourless majority thinks that the astronaut is an ‘alien’, we are ‘earthlings’ as much as they are. We couldn’t have summarized the song, ourselves and our state any better.

When we prepared the astronaut costume for the shoot, our volunteer model Emre knew he was going to have one of the best experiences of his life. As I was photographing our astronaut wandering the streets of Istanbul for two days, I also knew I would had one of the most beautiful shooting experiences of my life. Miraculously, we ran into one of our favourite directors of all time, Michael Gondry in Sultanahmet. I thought us astronauts could find one another easily, just like we did for this page.

After the shoot, on our way back; I fell asleep at the back seat both from happiness and exhaustion. When I woke up and said goodbye to Multitap; I walked in the streets with my camera on my back and examined people’s gazes and the lovers that I couldn’t be. I then thought about the issues that bother me. I knew I didn’t belong here, but then what was it that kept me here, I wish I knew…