Specter of an impossible desire brings these old faded images to present.
Only a desire to remember and to be remembered…
The garbages already started to stink because of the hot. Tacettin Efendi who is about 40 years old does not care about this scent everyone abstains and avoids to smell. He was earning his bread from bins. He was seeking after what people discarded. He constituted the first ring of the chain appreciating those were factionalized. He was also finding his job fascinating. But, he was having difficulties in explaining his job to those who asked what he does to earn money. His job is not something included in the job descriptions. Some people called him “garbageman”. However, he had not any business with the garbages. His business was “escapers” among the garbages. He had not any uniform, health insurance and right of strike. He goes to near the wastes before the garbagemen. In addition, the business carried out by Tacettin Efendi was concerned neither by state nor street-dwellers. The system he worked for was for the collectors. They called him “junkman” and sometime “paper collector” but these adjectives are unfair to so much of objects he collected except the junks and papers. He probably does not live enough to list the things he took from bins. Sometimes, he was also being surprised by what he found. Some people were thinking that he is a homeless “almsman” searching for food in the bins. Briefly, he had not any profession corresponded in the dictionary prepared by Turkish Language Agency. He was a part of the system adding value to what are discarded by the city and even turn them into the popular, rare objects of desire. The first stage of collecting system attributing value in public to the personal… When he was thinking about them, he was attaching importance to what he does and calling himself “culture hunter”. On the other hand, while he was searching the bins of others, he was thinking that he could not find any place in the society and feeling himself indifferent to the garbages that he has allocated, selected, investigated, searched and touched. The garbage can he stopped by that day was pretty crowded. It was apparent that a late spring cleaning was done. He firstly allocated such recyclable materials as newspapers, magazines, papers, bottles and cans. He was delivering them to SEKA for the recycling and receiving money for that per kilo. While he was dealing with these materials, his hunter eyes caught black and white photos from 50-60 years ago at least on the ground. Now, he cheered up. In a moment, he changed back to his identity of culture hunter. He carefully collected the photos one by one. What kind of value do they have? A seller from the junk market could buy all of them for a few cents and undersell some of them.
