“I wandered through the walled Old Town of Dubrovnik, where time seems to stand still. Within those ancient stone walls, the modern world’s clutter and noise fall away. Terracotta rooftops, sun-bleached churches, and narrow cobbled streets spilled before me as if freshly built centuries ago. I had taken hundreds of photographs already—rooftops glowing in the sun, the Adriatic glistening beyond—when a flicker of movement drew my eye to the rocks far below. Young people were leaping from the cliffs into the sea. My first instinct was to find the path down and join them, to surrender to the water’s embrace, to let the heat dissolve off my skin. But instead, I reached for my camera. The desire to swim became the desire to see. Some hurled themselves headfirst with arms flung wide like airplanes; others dove feet first, surfacing with shouts of joy only to climb back up and leap again. To be free, I thought. To be free. Words that define my soul.

My body stood high above the cliffs, rooted to the stone, while my spirit hurled itself into the sea again and again. My right index finger clicked rapidly, as if freedom itself would slip away if I missed the precise 1/600th of a second when their bodies hovered between sky and sea—weightless, suspended in the breath before falling. When a scene is that powerful, that exhilarating, something begins to shift. The boundary between observer and subject dissolves. You stop photographing what you see and begin photographing what you are. For hours I stood there, lost to time, watching the divers soar from shadow into light. Or perhaps I wasn’t watching at all. Perhaps I was the one leaping.”

-Bahar Kural

Awards: Gold Winner – 2023 Paris Street Photography Awards, Honorable Mention – 2023 International Photography Awards