Mark Slankard

(American, b. 1973; resides in Rocky River, OH)

When Mark Slankard first encountered the suburban high-rise developments pictured in his series Toplu: Landscapes of New Turkish Suburbia, he was a foreigner visiting his wife’s family in Turkey. Since 2008, he has returned several times to photograph budding condominium communities, which are built on cheap land that intersects with existing shanty homes outside of Turkish cities. The visible coexistence of hand-built shelters and high-density residencies parallels a familiar story of globalism, in which large-scale, systematic manufacture looms large over things that are constructed through modest human assembly.

Mark Slankard completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2002 from Ohio University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Indiana University in 1996. His work have been widely exhibited at venues including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Columbia University, New York; Texas Tech University, Lubbock, and the Ohio State University’s Wexner Center in Columbus. Currently, Slankard is an Assistant Professor in Photography at Cleveland State University.