This interview with Hüseyin Ovayolu accompanies our online release of his photographic collection Uprooted, a black and white exploration of borders, displacement, migration, and belonging.
Cameron Thibos (BTS): Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Hüseyin Ovayolu: I was born in 1986 in Gaziantep, a city in southern Turkey. After finishing high school, I received a full scholarship to study photography and videography at Bilgi University in Istanbul. I also completed the documentary photography programme at the Turkish Photography Foundation in this period.
Those years marked the beginning of my search for a photographic identity. It was also a time when I started to ask questions about myself and my background. I was becoming increasingly aware of how my family’s history, and the geography I was born into, were shaping not just my life but also my visual language.
After I graduated, I spent some time back in Gaziantep. I moved to London in 2022.
Cameron: Please also introduce your project. What did you do, when did you do it, and what it is about?
Hüseyin: This project is without doubt the most personal and expansive body of work I have completed to date. I began it when I was 30 years old. Over time, it evolved into a kind of therapy – an ongoing journey in which I repeatedly found myself on the road.
This was a period marked by the shifting political and social climate in Turkey. I deeply questioned the meaning of life during these years. My experience of belonging began to fragment, and I felt the weight of ‘otherness’ with increasing intensity.
At first, I didn’t give the project a name. Often, when embarking on a body of work, the story unfolds along the way. What we see, encounter, and experience provides not only images but also meaning.
When you’re born into an uncomfortable political reality, you inevitably carry that weight into your artistic search
My journey extended far beyond Turkey’s borders. I worked across Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Ukraine. In these places, displacement, scarcity, borders, and walls revealed themselves not only as physical barriers, but as deep psychological wounds. My project was shaped by the emotional weight of these absences. In the process, I came to understand both myself and the issues I was exploring more clearly.
Borders and walls became central – both visually and conceptually – to the narrative. From the ruins of war-torn regions to the temporary structures of refugee camps in Azerbaijan and Lebanon, what I encountered were not just architectural remnants, but powerful metaphors for forced displacement and the fragility of home.
When I set out, I intended to do more than just produce photographs. I wanted to learn, to reconnect with geographies that felt close yet were made distant by the existence of borders. My goal was to approach their stories with care, and to listen to what they had to say to me.
In the end, I was left with not only a photographic series, but the traces of a profound intellectual and emotional journey through identity, memory, and belonging.
Cameron: What motivated you to do this project? What were your questions and goals?
Hüseyin: This project emerged as a natural, almost instinctual need. Remaining silent as an artist in a geography marked by constant transformation and upheaval felt like a profound problem. To witness without responding is a form of detachment I cannot accept.
My approach was never that of a journalist reacting to immediate events. The impulse was different – slower, more internal. From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to create something closer to a visual novel: a layered narrative that carries silences, ruptures, and absences within itself. Not to report, but to evoke.
Cameron: Why did you choose the lands you did?
Hüseyin: Because I was born in this region and spent my childhood immersed in social life. I saw so many places where I wondered why people live there. Their mere presence has always amazed me – it’s given me a special respect for the attachment of the people to their land. I don't know if it's out of desperation or because of the value of what is called ‘roots,’ but this geography will always hold meaning for me.
Cameron: You are Kurdish and Alevi as well as a citizen of Turkey. How have these identities shaped your life experience?
Hüseyin: My life has been marked by a sense of otherness. I belong to a community that has, even in Turkey’s recent history, been subjected to repeated massacres. Being aware of this creates a constant sense of unease and a deep, unresolved struggle with belonging.
I was also born into a culture that holds a profound respect and love for nature. It’s hard to explain the effect of a belief system where fire, the sun, the moon, and trees are considered sacred, especially within the context of Turkey and the broader Middle East. But being Alevi instils in you a different way of seeing.
When you’re born into an uncomfortable political reality, surrounded by questions you didn’t choose, you inevitably carry that weight into your artistic search. It shapes your perspective, your language, and ultimately your creative voice.
They talked about the subtle discomfort of getting used to where they were
Cameron: You’re also from Gaziantep, which is close to the Syrian border in southeastern Turkey. How did your proximity to the Syrian war and experience of Syrian refugees in the region influence this project?
Hüseyin: Growing up on the border pushed me into a completely different world when I was a child. I remember envying the freedom of a bird flying from Turkey to Syria. That's probably why I made my first trip to Syria as soon as I turned 18.
I have known since childhood that some of our relatives remained in the Afrin region (in northern Syria) after the border was drawn. I still can’t get used to the fact that people who are not strangers to us are living separately just because of a ‘change in government’.
Those on the other side of the border came when the war started. At first, our friends and acquaintances said they wouldn't stay long. That they would return in a few years. But time passed, and they began instead to talk about the impossibility of return, and the subtle discomfort of getting used to where they were.
During my journey, I also met people who had only been able to take the keys to their homes with them. Those keys were their most cherished possession. It was enough to shake not just an artist but anyone to the core.
These experiences pushed me to think about borders and homelessness in a very different way. It’s why so many closed or abandoned borders appear in my photographs.
Cameron: Borders, and the arrogance of political leaders who break nations to build new ones, are both strong themes in this work. How do your life experiences and identities shape how you think about these two themes?
Hüseyin: I was born into a community that has historically been treated as ‘the other’ – a people who have experienced marginalisation, displacement, and even massacres within living memory. These are not abstract political ideas for me. They are lived realities that have shaped my sense of belonging and identity. I’ve always been aware of how borders – whether physical, cultural, or imagined – are used to control, divide and erase.
Through my work, I try to document the human consequences of these artificial divisions. The arrogance of political leaders who draw lines on a map – often without regard for the people who live there – leads to generational trauma, forced migration, and the breakdown of communities. I’m interested in what happens after a border is drawn: how people continue to live, resist, and carry their sense of home after it has been fractured.
My photographs don’t offer answers or solutions. Instead, they attempt to slow down the viewer. They create a space to reflect on the absurdity and cruelty of these imposed separations – and on the dignity of those who continue to endure them.
The arrogance of political leaders who draw lines on a map leads to generational trauma, forced migration, and the breakdown of communities
Cameron: What surprised you the most while creating this collection?
Hüseyin: There’s so much I could say. For example, I entered mining sites for the first time in my life. I didn’t go deep underground, but I visited key areas of the mines and took portraits of the workers. It affected me deeply. Miners are often underpaid and denied basic rights – hundreds die in workplace accidents every year. It is incredibly difficult to work without being overwhelmed by that reality.
I also witnessed the Newroz celebrations that mark the arrival of Spring in Akre, in Iraqi Kurdistan. It’s a festival that holds deep significance for Kurds, and one of the most magical evenings of my life. Hundreds of young people climbed the mountain, holding torches in their hands. At that blue hour, just after sunset, the sight of nearly 1000 flickering flames moving slowly up the mountainside was unforgettable.
In Baku, Azerbaijan, a friend took me to a Soviet-era apartment block where Azerbaijanis displaced by the First Nagorno-Karabakh War have been living for decades. When the residents saw me holding a camera and speaking Turkish, they tried to tell me about their struggles, hoping I might be able to help.
I listened in silence, feeling powerless. Their living conditions were so heartbreaking that I couldn’t bring myself to take more than a couple photographs. It was painful to see people suffering so deeply in a country made rich by oil – a country where the Karabakh issue is constantly talked about, yet the people who were displaced by it seem to have been forgotten.
Cameron: Shortly after completing this collection about borders, which you’ve titled Uprooted, you moved from Turkey to the UK. What pushed you to uproot yourself and cross the borders you’ve been exploring in your art?
Hüseyin: I came to London because I felt constrained by the changing social and political climate in Turkey – conditions that are now accepted as reality by many people. I believe that I can pursue my artistic endeavours more freely here.
