When Elif Yalım sent her photographs to Orta Format, we asked her to describe her works in more detail; and she told about poetry, music and movies rather than her photographs. Although this attitude may complicate things in the sense of understanding her works, come to think of Yalım's photographs, it was in fact what it supposed to be. Then, her works are more inclined to be grasped by images with some particular strength (a strength which finds it essence in its own naïvety), rather than images that are explained in words, long statements or titles. These were the first impressions the photographs gave which I will try to explain in relation to silent moments.

"I guess, in the formation of this visual language, what influenced me was poetry rather than images. Andre Breton says ‘I get up every day like everyone else and I stretch my arms against a floral wallpaper.' in his poem ‘Being'. And taking photographs is just as natural for me, a plain act. And Baudelaire talks about the language of objects, forms. They have this magical language. They speak a ‘mute language'."

When we think in these terms, when Baudelaire depicts a street he presents successive fragments. And when these fragments come together, they confront us with an alternative representation of history. Walter Benjamin traces Baudelaire, and he identifies him as a "flaneur", a notion that is difficult for the public to comprehend in the hubbub of everyday life, a person who reveals distinct details. He introduces him as someone who is pondering while wondering about, who knows how to look, and who sees through what he looks at. Flaneur is someone who departs from experiences rather than seeing the message ordinary life gives directly and presents with idioms. Elif Yalım may be tarred with the same brush as she describes what she narrates through her photographs: "Purifying the objects from their ‘obscure and limited' existence, giving an imaginary and ideational meaning to them by way of forms, different from their functions in everyday life." A journey that is unseen, but discovered gropingly.