Where Skin Meets Soil

The body becomes landscape; the landscape becomes flesh. Ecotone dissolves the boundary between human and environment.

In ecology, an ecotone is the transitional zone where two ecosystems meet—forest edge meeting meadow, shoreline meeting lake. These are places of tension and exchange, where one world bleeds into another. For fifteen years, Burak Bulut Yıldırım has photographed the human body as its own ecotone: the site where flesh encounters earth, water, grass, and animal.

The figures in Ecotone do not pose in nature—they merge with it. Bodies disappear into reed beds, press against ivy walls, stand among horses in volcanic landscapes. Hair becomes indistinguishable from blossom; skin reflects water; the human form fragments into the vertical lines of tall grass. The question is not whether the body belongs in nature, but whether any separation between them ever existed.

The series moves between high-contrast black-and-white and saturated colour, between arid rock formations and lush summer greens, between golden-hour silhouettes and cool lakeside mornings. The presence of animals—particularly horses—distinguishes Ecotone from traditional nude-in-landscape photography. The women do not dominate these creatures or use them as props; they coexist. Both species appear equally at ease, equally watchful, equally present.

Donna Haraway’s concept of “natureculture” resonates here—the recognition that nature and culture are not opposites but deeply entangled. The nude body in landscape is never simply “natural”; it is always a cultural act, a frame. Ecotone holds this tension without resolving it. These are not earth goddesses or pastoral fantasies but bodies attending to what surrounds them: the breath of a horse, the texture of bark, the temperature of water.

Ecotone has been in continuous development for fifteen years across Europe and the Mediterranean. Works were exhibited in Landsnude (Greece, 2015), and during the pandemic the sub-series Only You Are Close When Everything Is Far Away emerged. Selected works are available as limited edition archival prints through Artsper, Saatchi Art, and Artmajeur.