fair_play / My God is Still a Child

Cenk Erdoğan

130 pages

20x22 cm

Turkish - English

ISBN 978-625-00-5508-3

Offset Printing, Leporello Binding

950 gr.

Edition of 300, numbered and signed by the artist, September 2026.

A visual narrative built on the belief that time doesn't just flow forward, but folds in on itself, dropping the past's weight into the center of the present. Tracing his memories, this long-term photobook bridges his childhood country fairs with the limbo of today's traveling carnivals. Shot by Cenk Erdoğan over five years across Anatolia and Thrace, it reflects life's endless cycle: where the past folds into the present, children become nomadic adults, and adults revert to childhood.

The country fair embodies a massive transience. Set up in empty fields for a few days, this heterotopia creates its own world with yellow bulbs, rusty iron, and crowd noise blending into songs. Soon dismantled, it moves on, leaving behind only crushed grass and deep silence a self-revolving game. This cyclical transience is a nomadic story constantly uprooted, much like the void left behind by a human lifespan.

Amidst this transience, moving beyond a mere traveler's gaze, Erdoğan pairs lives caught in limbo, carnival spectacle, humor, and decisive moments through a diptych layout. He doesn't just document this fleeting world; he completes it with a book object that folds in on itself, becoming its own funfair. This is his photographic play.

A graduate of METU's City and Regional Planning Department, Erdoğan used his design and social sciences background as an art and creative director at international agencies. He has designed campaigns, visual identities, and books for numerous brands, earning national and international awards.

After completing documentary programs at Galata Photography Academy and IFSAK, Erdoğan continues to produce photography series focusing on daily life, memory, and time's visual traces within their social and spatial contexts.

His street photography series “did you sea Istanbul?” (2022)—exploring humorous intersections of life on Istanbul's shores—and “fair_play” (2023) have won international awards and been exhibited globally. Through “fall of icarus” (2022), “it’s not fair” (2023), and “rest of the wrest” (2024), he observes humanity's temporary, contradictory, and ironic relationships with the world. He featured in the 15th Bursa Fotofest (2025) and Edirne Biennial (2026).

Working as a freelance designer and photographer in Istanbul, Erdoğan is pursuing his master's degree at Marmara University's Photography Department.