Cemil, Karain, Karlik, Urgup, Nevsehir and many other small towns in Cappadocia region of Turkey are witnessing, to a different extent, a major demographic shift. The younger folks are moving to larger cities and increasingly to the countries of the EU. The older, less mobile portion of the populace is slowly leaving the scene naturally. In addition, some areas of those villages and towns previously populated by the Greeks and the Armenians, as can be guessed from finding abandoned and defiled churches, have not been lived in for quite some time... All this gave me a chance to explore the remains of the way of life that once was - cave dwellings ranging from humble "studios" to elaborate "town-homes", now either completely abandoned or used as storage rooms or shelters for livestock.
The cave dwellings, carved into a cliffside, are rapidly crumbling due to the erosion and softness of the rock which allowed their existence in the first place. The objects you see in my photographs are as I found them - and as the last occupants left them. I could almost feel their presence in those cold, dark spaces littered with the debris of their long lives.
Soon, the caves and the artifacts of that previous life will be no more... As it is, they are almost gone.