Illusion of Safety
Photography Series
2014
Illusion of Safety interrogates the paradox of security in modernist urban planning through the lens of Ataköy, a mid-20th-century mass housing complex in İstanbul, Turkey. By analyzing its transformation from a utopian communal experiment to a landscape dominated by surveillance infrastructure, the project critiques how safety mechanisms—cameras, watchtowers, and partitioned zones—function as symbolic gestures rather than effective safeguards. Photographic documentation and embodied practices like walking reveal the dissonance between designed control and lived experience, exposing the fragility of systems that prioritize visibility over genuine security.
Michel Foucault’s examination of spatial control in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison contextualizes this tension. His description of a quarantined town—locked doors, syndics enforcing curfews, and penalties for disobedience—parallels Ataköy’s evolution. Foucault’s framework underscores how disciplinary architectures, though framed as protective, inherently prioritize surveillance and psychological coercion. In Ataköy, green spaces and open facades, once symbols of modernist idealism, now coexist with barriers and cameras, echoing Foucault’s assertion that spatial partitioning cultivates compliance through perceived omnipresence rather than tangible safety.
Originally conceived in 1957 as a pioneering model of collective living, Ataköy’s design reflected aspirations for transparency and accessibility. Over time, however, these ideals mutated into security-centric interventions. Low hedges, once aesthetic elements, now serve as sightline regulators; watchtowers, absent in the original plan, loom as reminders of shifted priorities. These measures, while visually asserting order, fail to address systemic vulnerabilities. Crime persists not due to their absence but because their symbolic role eclipses functional utility. The project’s photographic practice captures this futility: dormant cameras, overgrown shrubs breaching fences, and gates left ajar—images that frame security infrastructure as inert relics of anxiety.
Walking through Ataköy’s streets further destabilizes its narrative of control. The act of seeing—pausing at barriers, documenting decaying boundaries—becomes a subversive critique. Buckminster Fuller’s “dome-organism” concept, which envisions structures as cohesive ecosystems, finds irony here. Ataköy’s enclosed layout, now fragmented by checkpoints, fosters claustrophobia rather than community. Uniform balconies and repetitive facades, photographed in stark contrast to utopian blueprints, highlight how isolation thrives under the guise of protection.
Ultimately, Illusion of Safety positions Ataköy as a microcosm of urban environments where fear legitimizes aestheticized control. The project argues that safety, when reduced to spectacle, erodes collective trust. By prioritizing photographic inquiry and spatial engagement, it challenges the notion that surveillance equates to security, proposing instead that resilience lies in reimagining shared spaces beyond the panoptic gaze.
