Starting with the basic question "what is this place?", award-winning journalist and novelist Ece Temelkuran guides us through her "beloved country". In challenging the authoritarian AKP government - for which she lost her job as a journalist - Temelkuran draws strength and wisdom from people, places and artistic expression. The result is a beautifully rendered account of the struggles, hopes and tragedies which make Turkey what it is today. Lamenting the commercialisation and authoritarianism which increasingly characterises Turkish society, Temelkuran sees hope in the Gezi Park protests of 2013, the electoral breakthrough of the progressive HDP party in 2015 and in the simple kindness of ordinary people. Much more than either straightforward history or memoir, Turkey: the Insane the Melancholy is like sitting with a friendly stranger who, over raki or coffee, reveals the secrets of this rich and complex country - the historic "bridge" between east and west.

The de-objectification of the photograph in the digital era of the medium is one of the many issues regarding 'post-photography' although its consequences on the identity and principles of photography are as yet largely obscure and argued upon. Alongside other more structural transformations, objectless photography will have effects on the medium regarding issues such as memory, indexicality, authenticity and monetary value. While apparent that the object continues to survive alongside new immaterial photographs and influences their implementations, whether or not it is possible for object properties to be assimilated into the new system without transfiguring the medium completely remains to be seen. With the help of discourses from scholars such as Geoffrey Batchen, Damian Sutton and W. J. Mitchell, this master's thesis seeks to answer how vital objecthood is to the medium photography by examining, respectively, the connection of memory to the object and the ideological differences between the object and its digital counterpart.

Starting with the basic question "what is this place?", award-winning journalist and novelist Ece Temelkuran guides us through her "beloved country". In challenging the authoritarian AKP government - for which she lost her job as a journalist - Temelkuran draws strength and wisdom from people, places and artistic expression. The result is a beautifully rendered account of the struggles, hopes and tragedies which make Turkey what it is today. Lamenting the commercialisation and authoritarianism which increasingly characterises Turkish society, Temelkuran sees hope in the Gezi Park protests of 2013, the electoral breakthrough of the progressive HDP party in 2015 and in the simple kindness of ordinary people. Much more than either straightforward history or memoir, Turkey: the Insane the Melancholy is like sitting with a friendly stranger who, over raki or coffee, reveals the secrets of this rich and complex country - the historic "bridge" between east and west.