Inherited Architecture by Will Young

100 years ago the Treaty of Lausanne led to the forced expulsion of over 1.2 million Christians from Turkiye and over 400,000 Muslims from Greece. The population exchange shaped the modern world and the nation state system. Both modern countries can scarcely be explained without reference to it.

This series documents several locations where these expulsions took place, focusing on the inherited architecture of the other. These remaining fragments of the past raise a number of important issues about the politics of national memory, the role of architecture and how such heritage should be interacted with.

Simultaneously, the continual physical presence of these structures in now seemingly 'foreign' landscapes and societies, can be interpreted to represent the lingering intergenerational trauma of forced migration and the inherited diasporic feeling still present in the descendants of exchangees. It is hoped these observations might elicit broader questions about how contemporary forced migrations will shape our world a hundred years from now.

Will Young

My name is Will Young and I am a documentary photographer from Cornwall, UK. As a graduate in international relations, I am fascinated by memory, identity and the nation state. Recently I have been intrigued by how identities and narratives are constructed when the raw material of group memories consists of intense hardship and suffering such as war and forced migration. How do we construct a positive image of the self and a united image of the nation out of traumatic events? What do we include and exclude from a collective memory? How do we practically incorporate old identities in new places?

Following these interests, I have been working on a personal project reflecting on the 100 year anniversary of the Greek- Turkish population exchange. My recent work has focused on the material aspects that remain of this memory, presenting them as they are; imposing obstacles in the physical landscape, and symbolically as uncomfortable interruptions in the national memory.

Selected images from this series will be featured this year at Glasgow Gallery of Photography, as part of Loosenart's 'Mimesis' exhibition in Rome and at Chania International Photo Festival.

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