Spectral Images

This study is an attempt to make sense of family photographs that are circulating in antique markets in Turkey. The phenomenon of "dispossessed family photographs" is examined on the basis of the critical literature on photography mainly by Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Depending on this theoretical framework, this study examines the discourse of antique sellers/collectors about "dispossessed family photographs" and the field that these photographs are circulating in. The discourse of antique sellers/collectors suggests that, "dispossessed photographs" have an elusive quality both in the minds of people and in the antique domain. That is why the word "specter" is used to emphasize the "spectral quality" of "dispossessed family photographs" as the word evokes the indefinite, untraceable and hard to frame quality of such images. Also the term "specter" invokes the physical state of family photographs in the sense that they fade and get pale as if referring their mysterious ghost-like presence in the market.