THE ARTISTS
Mike Mandel, an American photographer, comes to this project in the role of the outsider. At first overwhelmed by the relentless presence of Atatürk’s imagery, his is a photographic journey of discovering exactly what is at stake. has published nine photo-based books since the early 70’s, including Myself: Timed Exposures, 1971, Seven Never Before Published Portraits of Edward Weston, 1974, the Baseball-Photographer Trading Cards, 1975, and Making Good Time, 1989. In 1977 Larry Sultan and Mandel authored Evidence, a photo narrative comprised only of found images that has been recognized as a seminal artists’ book and a precursor to subsequent postmodern strategies of photographic practice. Evidence was re-published in 2004 by D.A.P. In 1989 Mandel authored Making Good Time, counter pointing photographic efficiency studies made for industry by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in the early part of the 20th century with his own time/motion photographs.
Mike Mandel has been a recipient of several NEA grants and a Fulbright Fellowship. In 2005 his work was exhibited in the Berlin Biennale and recently in 2009, at PhotoEspaña in Madrid. He currently teaches within the photography program at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Chantal Zakari is a Turkish-Levantine artist and a recent U.S. citizen. Her education since childhood was filled with propagandistic images of Atatürk designed to personify a sense of national identity. As an artist, now living in the U.S., she has a different perspective. Zakari was trained as a designer and an artist. She published The Turk & The Jew, in 1998 with Mandel, a book based on the web-narrative by the same title, which was launched in 1996. In 2005, using a pseudonym, she self-published webAffairs, a documentary of a web community. She has had solo shows of her work in the U.S. and in Turkey. She has given book readings in the form of performances in the U.K., Netherlands, Canada and the U.S.
Zakari is a faculty member in the Text and Image Arts Area at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.