BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE These reflections were captured during one of the last journeys I shared with my mother. We had spent the summer together in our home in Bodrum, drifting between long days by the sea and small adventures that stitched our time into memory. From Bodrum, we sailed across the Aegean to the Greek islands of Kos, Patmos, and Samos. Later, we drove north along the Turkish coast, from Çeşme to Ayvalık, pausing to walk through our family’s olive groves, and making an excursion inland to explore the ancient ruins of Assos. One afternoon in Assos, in a small fishing village, we stopped for a meal by the water. A fisherman’s boat named Dolunay was docked in front of us, and its painted hull and mast dissolved into the rippling surface of the harbor. While we waited for our food, I spent nearly an hour photographing nothing but those shifting reflections — colors breaking apart, recomposing themselves into fluid abstractions of blue, green, and ochre.

My mother sat beside me as she always did, quietly patient, never interrupting, sometimes watching me, sometimes turning to her own thoughts. I knew she admired the way I disappeared into the act of seeing, even as she teased me later about how completely I could forget the world when holding my camera. She was always my first and most trusted critic, though there was little she did not love. I could not bring myself to look at these photographs for over a year after she passed away. Now, when I return to them, I see more than the shimmer of water and light. I see my mother’s presence reflected back at me — in her patience, her admiration, her quiet companionship. These images have become both memory and elegy, holding the joy of our last summer together and the ache of her absence, as fleeting and fragile as the reflections themselves.