Sennur Sezer’de Görsel Betim: Bir Anının İkonografisi
Visual Depiction in Sennur Sezer: Iconography of a Memoir

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the memoir of Sennur Sezer (1943–2015), in which she wrote in an article titled “I am Sennur Sezer,” published in the Evrensel newspaper in 1995, about a foreman who committed suicide, leaving a note, during the years she worked at Taşkızak Shipyard. This memoir reminds the reader of many images of death and suicide. Our purpose is to explore the patterns of transition between the memoir and the works of art it tells within the framework of three different areas of expertise (literature, folklore, art history) in order to obtain the hidden fiction and deep meaning by creating the social, literary, and artistic context underlying the events in the memoir. The iconography of the memoir is analyzed using the seven keys proposed by Simon Morley in analyzing works of art (historical, biographical, aesthetic, experiential, theoretical, skeptical, market) and Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz’s mythic artist biography methods. Some of the findings are as follows: Because of Sezer’s intellectual depth, the visual power of her words, and her versatility in the world of literature and art, the memoir turns into a multi-layered work of art. The relationship between Sezer’s memoir, which is claimed to have been created with a visual language, and visual arts is realized in the following four ways: Even if it is based on a tragic event, glorifying death, the calmness of death, depicting the deceased at peace, expressing the deceased until his last breath. Other elements that transform the memoir into a painting contain the use of different literary genres and stereotyped images that glorify the dead body; the main aesthetic tool is the twisted structure. With her original working style, Sezer can also be described as a literary collage maker. The memoir is also a turning point in the biography of Sezer, who loves myths, and it turns into the etiological legend of Sezer’s choice of the path of writing.

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