Bilal Mohamed
Living through this year has been a rollercoaster of events, emotions, disasters, shortcomings, triumphs, and an endless array of changes that could never have been anticipated. Apart of these changes for me, has been the definition of this term “Isolation” itself. The call for isolation of various elements of my being has practically become an obligation if I am to maintain a state of mental, physical, and spiritual health. At the beginning of 2020 for example, I was self-isolating for the safety of myself, friends, and family, but eventually, the anxieties rising from social issues of Black death and governmental mismanagement of the Coronavirus in America then called for my isolation from the news and information bombardment. The world as we know it today, has been in a state so difficult to cope with, my options for recourse have repeatedly turned back to some form of isolation.
In order to escape the tensions that have been arising in my home country, what with the election, Trump’s loss, police brutality, Coronavirus, etc., I have decided to spend some time in Istanbul, Turkey, (my current place of reclusion), in order to expose myself to new environments and a different style of living. The photos I have made here, I very much consider as art rooted in discovery, where I go about my day with a camera in hand relying on Allah to show me images to capture. And in them you find raw, unfiltered snapshots of everyday beauty that commonly goes unnoticed, meant to unearth the appeal of a life that has been presently so hard to live. There is a strong sense of submission that comes with my current lifestyle – an active decision to live presently and be open to the endless changes that we know now, are in fact normal.