A series of aerial shots depicting tourist attractions in Turkey, offering both a sense of freedom and an uplifting amalgamation of colors through the lens of Ali Kabaş, is on display at the PG Art Gallery in İstanbul.

“Five years ago, in order both to nourish my desire to fly and to take aerial photographs, I began to fly with a paramotor,” Kabaş explains. “Formerly I was a pilot, and sometimes I also used to fly helicopters, but the fact that a paramotor is carriageable [easy to handle] was alluring. Starting from my first flight, the ideas about this exhibition began to evolve. I added a newer dimension to the things we see on the ground,” the artist says during an interview with Today’s Zaman.

Kabaş says he caught some very unexpected and interesting shots during his excursions. The show includes frames taken in -- or rather, over -- locations that range from İstanbul, Isparta, Alanya and the Central Anatolian Tuz Gölü (Salt Lake) to the historic southern holiday spots of Olimpos, Patara, Belek and Dalyan. “I fly all four seasons. You cannot predict what you can catch. This exhibition does not have a fictional dimension that is different than that of my previous shows. There is only a world that continually changes down there while you are flying,” says the pilot-artist.

However fun it may seem, taking those photographs is not easy. “It requires a certain experience and speed to catch artistic frames, [and in the meantime] controlling the camera while [having to manage] continual changes both on the motor and the parachute,” the artist explains. Still, he would not have done this if it were an easy thing to do, Kabaş says.

The unifying theme of the photos in Kabaş’s “High Angle,” as well as that of his previous three solo exhibitions -- “DreamWorld,” “Mound-Silent Villages” and “Recto-Verso” -- is the sensation of freedom, the artist says. His first show was also a “creative enlightenment” while his second show caught the soul of a number of tumuli during archaeological excavations. In his last exhibition, Kabaş tried to give motion to photographs through the lenticular technique, which magnifies different images when viewed from different angles, and showing two frames at once.

“The thing I want to say is that a person can transform something he dreams of into a photograph and can show a dream as reality through the photograph. Creative enlightenment is, in order to catch the effect I want to give, trying different lights and doing this via out-of-the-ordinary norms. It is something where the limit is not myself.”

“High Angle” will remain on display until Jan. 31 at the PG Art Gallery in Bebek. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday. Tel: (212) 263 3390