"#duplanulla / #doublezero"

My diploma project is a portrait series created in public restrooms and portraying the people who work there. It is titled "#duplanulla / #doublezero", where the hashtag symbolizes the era in which the series was made and also refers to the mirror selfies taken in restrooms that often end up on social media platforms. The second part of the title, double zero, is an old-fashioned term for the toilet, and it may also evoke the social perception of this kind of work. Through my images and the accompanying text, I aim to challenge and counter these stereotypes. There’s a saying: Money has no smell. It’s connected to public restrooms and, as the phrase suggests, they can be unpleasant places. Even if we don’t avoid them, we certainly don’t spend time there. I haven’t seen a photo series from such places before- at most, documentation exists - and we know even less about the people who work there. This made the subject particularly interesting to me. It’s not a place where we spend time, nor a typical visual environment, but through photography, I can show that these hidden spaces are visually engaging and reflect the era we live in, just like any other architectural detail. While creating the images, it was equally important for me to focus on the space and the person within it. The result is distant yet visually compelling, and at the same time human-centered. I aimed to strike a balance between these aspects every time I pressed the shutter.