Sharp

I’ve taken thousands of photos that mean nothing to me—the kind you make with a cheap camera and forget immediately. Everyone has. It’s the default mode now: cameras everywhere, no barrier between wanting to document something and actually capturing it, results are irrelevant.

Then you see what Murat Aslan does and it’s a different thing entirely. Berlin photographer, he’s shot Peter Fox, Sudberlin Maskulin, Marius Müller Westernhagen, the guys from MTV GameOne—people who matter. The work is alive. Not just technically accomplished, though it is that. There’s something in how he frames a person, how light sits in an image, that makes you actually look at the photograph instead of just absorbing it and moving on.

The thing about seeing photography that good is it changes how you look at every other image you see afterward. You start noticing when something has presence and when it’s just competent. When someone actually has a point of view. It’s not a comfortable realization if you’ve been casually making images yourself, but it’s the useful kind of uncomfortable. There’s a craft here. It requires something actual.