Cemre Yeşil Gönenli’s book Hayal & Hakikat, published by FiLBooks and Fraglich Publishing, deals with the themes of forgiveness and punishment through photographs of prisoners from the reign of Abdülhamid II. Through images taken from Ottoman archives, the book juxtaposes the possibility of prisoners’ release with their permanent punishment.
Hayal & Hakikat contains photographs of murder convicts with their hands exposed as part of an amnesty planned by Abdülhamid II in his 25th jubilee year. The Sultan ordered these photographs based on the claim in detective novels that character can be analyzed based on the length of the thumb.
The first part of the book, “Imagination,” features the hands of prisoners waiting to be pardoned. The second part, “Truth,” features shackled images of people sentenced to life imprisonment who are not pardoned.
The artist leaves the prisoners’ heads out of the frame in all the photographs. This choice is made to not redefine the prisoners as criminals and to open a new space for them. The fate of the people in the book is unknown; there is no record of which prisoners Abdülhamid II pardoned.
The book’s second edition is dedicated to the ongoing struggle for democracy in Turkey. Hayal & Hakikat has previously won the “Best International Photo Book of the Year Award” at PHotoESPAÑA 2021 and has been shortlisted for various international photo book awards.
