[Photography] Interview with Fadil Inceoglu

[KELP JOURNAL] These photographs, Fadil, are iconic! It is so amazing to view the world through such a worldly person such as yourself. Can you talk about how you approached these subjects with fresh eyes and how you went about capturing the images?

[FADIL INCEOGLU] First of all, thank you for the kind words and for the opportunity to share my work.

When I go out with my camera, I make a conscious effort to slow down, not just to look, but to see. I try to perceive what would otherwise be drowned in the noise of everyday life. The first three photographs - California, Flamingos, and Ferris Wheel - were taken in Santa Monica, near the pier in Los Angeles.

While my initial perception is visual, the act of photographing is guided by my emotions, by what I value, what strikes me as worth capturing. Emotions are not random; they’re the automatic responses of a person to what they perceive, rooted in their values. So, when I choose to photograph something, it’s because it resonates with those values. Having said that, the composition, the angle, motion, exposure, are deliberate. They’re chosen to make the emotion I experienced intelligible to the viewer. Those three images feel quintessentially Californian to me: light, summery, full of joy.

In contrast, the other two photographs - Sunrise and To the Sunset - were taken here in Miami Beach. They reflect a different emotional state, a quieter or more contemplative mood. You can sense the shift in tone immediately. That’s not accidental, it’s how I was experiencing the world at that moment.

[KJ] You mentioned that you are inspired by minimalist photography and specifically

Vivian Maier, Imogen Cunningham, Fan Ho, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Robert Blomfieldf, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Why are you drawn to their works? What is it about these masters that you hope to reflect in your own work?

[FI] I’d like to offer a small clarification if I may. What inspires me is not minimalism alone, but a blend of aesthetics and intention. While I do appreciate certain elements of minimalist photography, like its clarity, discipline, and focus, my primary influences come from the greats of documentary and street photography: Vivian Maier, Fan Ho, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Robert Blomfield, and Henri Cartier-Bresson—alongside Imogen Cunningham, whose practice focused more on portraiture and floral composition than street photography, but her mastery of light and shadow remains deeply influential to me. I wouldn’t categorize any of these masters as minimalist photographers.

What draws me to their work is their ability to capture life as it unfolds, unscripted, rich with context, and layered with emotion. Where minimalism often abstracts reality into form and color, these photographers confront it head-on without distortion or abstraction. They don’t merely document appearances; they isolate meaningful moments, revealing something essential about the people, places, or times they observed, whether it’s Vivian Maier’s candid street scenes or Saul Leiter’s use of colors and reflections.

From my perspective, these artists use the camera as a tool of awareness, not just to observe, but to identify what is significant to them. That significance is shaped by their perception and emotional state, by how they respond to the chaos of daily life. That, to me, is the essence of photography: to grasp a fleeting moment of reality and say, “This mattered.”

What I hope to reflect in my own work is that same intentionality. Like those masters, I’m drawn to specific gestures, juxtapositions, or qualities of light that resonate emotionally but not arbitrarily. When I look through my photographs as a timeline, I can trace the arc of my emotional state, its rise and fall, with occasional divergences. Yet there’s a recurring theme that runs through all of them.

The emotion comes from something very real: the way a subject stands, the angle of a shadow, the color of a van under the California sun. These aren’t just aesthetic details, they’re anchors of meaning. They reveal what I value, and why the moment mattered.

I study their mastery of light and shadow, their precise use of framing and timing, and their ability to tell a story in a single frame.

[KJ] There is an assumption by many that the sciences and the arts are separate and adhere to a strict dichotomy, like left brain-right brain. However, many of the contributors to The Wave work in the hard sciences and medical fields. I am curious: with your vast professorial career spanning numerous countries and continents, and a  Ph.D. in Physics, what your take is: Are  they (the sciences and the arts) really as apart as they might seem? 

[FI] I’m not sure that assumption has any scientific foundation. In my view, it’s less about a strict divide and more about how creativity is channeled, whether through scientific inquiry, artistic expression, or both.

Scientific thinking requires creativity just as much as logic. Without it, you risk becoming one of those “shut up and calculate” PhDs who are technically competent but intellectually stagnant. Real breakthroughs happen when you think freely, question assumptions, and follow unexpected paths. Having said that, of course, creative thought in science still has to be tested. It must be filtered through logic and the scientific method.

So no, I don’t think there’s a true dichotomy. It’s a false split. Both the arts and the sciences begin with a deep engagement with reality, and both require the courage to pursue original thought.

[KJ] I know that you like to play with the concept of time in photography; long  exposures of “fleeting moments”. But photography itself is playing with time by capturing said fleeting moment at all. Photography expands one moment in such expanse detail that it becomes a story. Photographs like those at Tiananmen Square or The Terror on War, have such power as do, albeit differently, night sky photography. But all of this got me thinking: isn’t time a basic concept of physics? Is every photographer an amateur physicist then?

[FI] I’d like to gently push back on the premise and maybe clarify a few concepts. Please bear with me if it gets a bit philosophical.

First, no, taking a photograph doesn’t make someone an amateur physicist, any more than mixing blue and red paint to get purple makes you a chemist.

It’s true that photography involves time, particularly through the adjustment of exposure. But fundamentally, this refers to how long the camera sensor, or film, is exposed to light passing through the lens. At its core, it’s a form of measurement: you’re registering the interaction between light and time over a surface.

But applying a method of measurement is not the same as understanding it. A scientist doesn’t stop at using the method, they investigate its foundations, refine its application, and use it to explore deeper phenomena. That’s the difference between using a tool and understanding its principles. But even that’s not the end. A scientist goes further, applying those principles to produce new knowledge, however incremental.

When I play with exposure or motion blur, I’m not conducting a physical experiment to disentangle or investigate a phenomenon. I’m identifying a moment that contains more than its duration, something layered, emotional, real. And yes, as a physicist, I find it amusing that a 1/500th of a second can carry more perceptual and emotional weight than ten pages of equations.

So no, photographers aren’t amateur physicists. But the best of them do, like physicists, care deeply about the nature of what’s real.

[KJ] Art calls to everyone differently, but I was wondering, as a long-time artist in both photography and painting, if you find yourself going through moods or “periods” (a la Picasso). Where you are concentrating on one form, style, or like Picasso, color? I think very few people know that Picasso, after Cubism, moved into Surrealism, Ceramics, and then Ink and Brush drawings. It seems he never stopped experimenting.

[FI] Yes, absolutely. I do go through creative periods, and they often reflect both my evolving technical interests and my emotional state.

When I first started photography, I was more drawn to color and to shooting through reflective surfaces, usually at eye level. You can clearly guess who was my first and biggest inspiration. Over time, that shifted into freehand, hip-level black and white photography, which felt more instinctive and raw. Lately, I’ve been contemplating a return to eye-level shooting, but with a more deliberate and expressive approach, perhaps incorporating new techniques or visual disruptions that challenge my own habits.

I think this evolution mirrors something internal. It’s about trying to break out of my own aesthetic molds, to remain expressive, to not fall into repetition. It’s less about adopting a style and more about responding to what I’m feeling and needing to express at that time.

When I was painting in my younger years, I followed a similar arc, starting with bold, colorful abstract pieces and gradually shifting toward expressionist portraits that mirrored a more introspective mood. Some of those works were inspired by Modigliani, Kahlo, and Picasso’s Cubist self-portraits. Just to be clear though, I never pursued painting professionally. It was always a personal, exploratory practice rather than a formal artistic path.

Still, those shifts taught me something essential: how to translate internal states into visual form. That mindset of using image to convey emotion continues to guide my photography today.

Fadil Inceoglu is a Turkish-born artist and scientist living in Miami Beach, Florida. His journey began with a move to Denmark at the age of 27 to pursue a Ph.D. in physics, marking the start of a diverse academic career spanning Denmark, Germany, and the United States. It was in Denmark that he met his husband, Jesper, to whom he has been married since 2019.

His passion for visual arts has always been a central part of his identity. As a young man, he expressed his creativity through painting before transitioning to photography, which has become his primary artistic outlet. His work in both black-and-white and color photography is informed by minimalism, abstraction, and street photography, drawing inspiration from masters such as Vivian Maier, Imogen Cunningham, Fan Ho, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Robert Blomfield, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

His photography is shaped by Objectivist principles, grounded in the belief that reality is objective and knowable. His goal is not to distort, but to identify, capturing the world as it is, with clarity, intention, and emotional resonance. He tries to make photographs that feel clear—not just visually, but in what they’re saying. They’re selective, grounded, and honest in what they show. Through photography, he explores genres such as minimalism, abstraction, architecture, and street photography. He employs techniques like intentional camera movement and long exposure to express the emotional tone of a moment, as well as direct documentation to preserve its factual essence.

His objective is to capture aspects of reality we often overlook: the interplay of light and shadow, the quiet geometry of a building, or the unguarded expression of a passerby. Through deliberate composition and technical control, he aims to reveal the beauty of simplicity, the elegance of abstraction, and the truth found in everyday experience.

He holds that art is a reflection of the artist’s mind and emotions, integrated through the values that define him and his photography reflects how he sees the world—through observation, reason, and a need to create something that actually means something.