Haworthia

No flower could win his heart anymore. Even the most charming ones could not soothe him. Every evening he stared at the empty street from the balcony, his shoulders drooped as if it were the last time to enjoy life, and then smoked a cigarette between his lips …

The Carfare

Every time the car went over a damned bump or pothole, it went seesawing, and the glove compartment latch creaked. Suddenly it opened and everything flew out before my eyes: a yellow screwdriver, some folded paper, an insurance document, a Bic pen, and a handful of rusty bolts and screws …

I Saw Jim Jarmusch Yesterday

I saw Jim Jarmusch yesterday. The same American director who made Paterson, Dead Man, Broken Flowers, and many other movies. It was an afternoon in the middle of the week. Grand Central was as crowded as ever. I was on my way to Metro Line 5 for a writing review session downtown. Suddenly, in the middle of the crowd, I saw him approaching from ten or twenty feet away …

Uncle Samad

It was at a Chicago airport eight or nine years ago that I found my place in America for the first time. It was like walking into a cinema town. The airport was full of men and women wearing red, blue, green, white, and purple. I had never seen so many people of different color in one place. The exhaustion of my long journey combined with the calm tranquility and the pleasant ecstasy of seeing new people like a midday nap after a heavy lunch …

Michael Jackson & Michael Jackson

It was Sunday afternoon. The central park entrance was crowded as always and you could hear the sound of music, whistles, and applause from the other side of the street. People formed a ten-to-twenty-meter-wide circle. I guessed there might be someone doing some stunt in the middle. I got closer. People were capturing it on their phone cameras. I took a look. There was a Michael Jackson dancing in the middle …

Luigi Ghirrii

Luigi Ghirri is a spectator of simplicity. This simplicity is not a result of negligence but the result of him crossing the border of seeing correctly. His simple photographs have repeatedly crossed the borders of thought and are now framed before our eyes. To truly understand his work, we need to answer the question of how to see simplicity more frequently, better, and more precisely. The same thing that William Eggleston or Martin Per do to us. Behind every simplicity is a complexity, and behind every nested thought a simple frame manifests …

Embracing Heisenberg

"Breaking Bad" unfolds exactly where "Walter White" meets "Heisenberg." Walter, a quiet family man and low-paid teacher, is very different from Heisenberg, the top meth maker and dangerous drug dealer. Yet, both characters exist in the same person.

Halfway through the story, I started to envy Walter …

The Endless Self

Cindy Sherman is known for her untitled photographs from the 1970s, published in a series called Film Stills. These images created a new identity for the audience of the media of that era. Behind the mask of repeatedly seen faces, Sherman was multiplying herself. This self was no longer herself. Anyone could be that self, precisely anyone who was the audience of those media. Since then, as media expanded and advanced, this self did not remain static in the form of those film stills but was presented in alignment with the trends of the times—more, faster, and more diversely than before. It was as if there was no competition left to strive for, as technology and its easy access encouraged this multiplication.

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