Artist

Burak Bulut Yıldırım

Lives and works in Berlin.

Statement

My practice begins where the body stops being a subject and becomes a medium. For over two decades I have photographed the nude not to expose but to transform — working with skin as landscape, architecture, relic, and light. The body in my photographs is never only present; it is always becoming something else.Each series opens a different threshold. UnNude reduces the figure to sculptural geometry. Chimera fractures identity through damaged mirrors and projected light, producing anatomies that exist only in the moment of exposure. Antemortem lingers in the space before disappearance. Lucida dissolves the body into ultraviolet glow. Ecotone places the figure at the threshold between skin and soil, human and non-human. Motus records the body in duration rather than in the frozen instant.I work primarily in-camera. The distortions in Chimera come from physical mirrors. The blur in Motus comes from long exposure. The pigments in Lucida react to light in the room, not in software. This is not a rejection of digital tools but a commitment to presence — to being in the room when the image happens, to working with light and time rather than correcting them after the fact.The work is not pursued as provocation. It is pursued as attention — a sustained looking that treats the body as the ground of perception itself, rather than as an object to be consumed.

Biography

Burak Bulut Yıldırım (b. 1982, Istanbul) is a photographer and artist whose long-form practice investigates the body as medium — through light, in-camera optical intervention, material transformation, and spatial encounter. His work unfolds across a constellation of interconnected series developed over two decades.His photographs have been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Europe, including UnNude: The Architecture of the Body at Die Akt Galerie, Berlin (2025); Dress Code: Light, Die Akt Galerie, Berlin (2024); Portraits, Fogae Gallery, Zurich (2025); Eros & Thanatos, XVal Gallery, Barcelona (2023); Bodies in Movement, Loosen Art Gallery, Rome (2019); Black Light and In Haste at Volksbank Gallery and Abraham-Gumbel-Saal, Heilbronn (2019).Alongside his individual practice, Yıldırım works as curator. His curatorial project The Nudes of Istanbul opens at Die Akt Galerie, Berlin, in July 2026, presenting fourteen photographers working in Istanbul with an accompanying ISBN publication. His earlier curatorial project LandsNude was presented at Artcore Gallery, Thessaloniki, in 2015.His work has been reviewed by curator Michael Hanna for Aedra Fine Arts and featured in international photography publications. Selected works are held in private collections and available as limited edition archival prints.He is a member of the German Portrait Photography Society (BPP) and holds the International Artist Card of the IGBK (Internationale Gesellschaft der Bildenden Künste). He lives and works between Berlin and Istanbul.

Contact

Studio & representation enquiries: studio@burakbulut.orgPrint sales & editions: print@burakbulut.org