May 13: Beyond Testimony
May 12 - June 7, 2026
Yusuf Aslan
The exhibition “May 13: Beyond Witnessing,” which is part of the *Between Contradictions, Possibilities and Utopias* cultural and artistic project, consists of a selection of eleven photographs chosen from documentary photographer Yusuf Aslan's work on the Soma Mine Disaster.
Beyond being a visual record of the tragedy, the exhibition looks at a moment where time is fractured, stretched, and still ongoing. It brings together the panic of the moment of the tragedy, the heavy silence of waiting, and a state of collective mourning on the same plane. The photographs in the exhibition move beyond focusing on a specific day—the Soma Mine Disaster, one of the greatest catastrophes in world mining history and described as a massacre—pointing to a continuous present, an unending "that day," and creating a space that goes beyond mere witnessing, allowing one to feel how the social, political, and emotional traces of the event circulated.
The photographs in the selection, far from aestheticizing the dramatic moments of the event, point to a disturbing flow that unsettles the gaze. Therefore, the exhibition “May 13: Beyond Witnessing” creates a visual field of uninterrupted violence, not frozen time, and reminds us that deaths are predictable, preventable, and therefore political. What is visible is not merely of that moment; it is a threshold where insecurity and the profit-driven work system that devalues labor become visible. This moment, resulting from years of structural neglect, neoliberal modes of production, and life-devaluing policies, finds its expression in the tension of the photographs.
About
Yusuf Aslan
Documentary photographer Yusuf Aslan completed his primary and secondary education in Sivas and his teacher training in Savaştepe. He studied Journalism and Public Relations. He worked as a teacher in Sivas, Aydın, and Germany. He served as the president of the Kuşadası Photography and Cinema Art Association (KUFSAD) and was responsible for organizing the Kuşadası Photography Days during this period.
She witnessed and documented events such as the Van and Hatay earthquakes, the Gezi Park protests, and the Soma mine disaster. She worked on the "Europe: Castle Gate" project for the Dutch News Agency, which criticized Europe's attitude towards refugees through human stories. Items and photographs left behind by refugees on the shores between Bodrum and Dikili (together with Aykan Özener) were exhibited at the International Fotoistanbul Festival. She created an installation titled "Refugee Museum" with Özcan Yurdalan.
She worked as an editor alongside Özcan Yurdalan and Aykan Özener on the MGH (Visual Stories from My Homeland) project, organized by the Turkish Photography Federation (TFSF) in 2018-2019. She also served as an editor on the collaborative Editorial Photography project, “Photography in the Time of Corona.” She contributed to the “Documentary Stories from the Anthropocene Era” project with her work “The House with Fish Running Through It.” She participated in the exhibition, book, and neighborhood festival projects “The Remembering Neighborhood” and “Looking Back from the Past: Visual Stories from the Neighborhood,” all conceived by Özcan Yurdalan. She conducted photography workshops with children in Soma, Antakya, Nurhak, Kuşadası, and Samandağ.
His news photographs have been published in Western media, including one on the cover of Der Spiegel. He has participated in national and international festivals with exhibitions and shows. His photographs have been published in magazines and books. "Nobody's Beach," "The Silent Killer," and "After the Last Sky" are among his other works.
