Proyecto curatorial - Próxima exposición y publicación
Los desnudos de Estambul
A 14-year Project
A Collective Manifesto from Istanbul's Nude Art Workshops
Obras seleccionadas de la exposición
Un avance de las obras de los catorce fotógrafos participantes.
Exposición
Krossener Str. 34, 10245 Berlín, Alemania
Fotógrafos participantes
Fourteen photographers from Istanbul, developed through sustained participation in curated nude art workshops over the past fourteen years. All works in the exhibition were made in Istanbul. Five of the fourteen participants are women, a significant proportion in the context of Turkish nude photography's historically limited female authorship.
Colaboradores modelo de la publicación
Two nude models who have worked in Istanbul across the period the exhibition covers have contributed written essays to the accompanying publication. Their texts appear alongside the photographers' work as an essential structural component of the book, not as supplementary commentary.
Publicación
La exposición va acompañada de un fotolibro de tapa dura publicado con registro ISBN y distribución internacional. El libro está impreso en inglés, concebido para funcionar como un registro autónomo del proyecto independiente de la propia exposición. Cada uno de los catorce fotógrafos participantes está representado a través de una selección dedicada. La publicación también incluye una importante introducción curatorial de Burak Bulut Yıldırım, un encuadre histórico de la fotografía de desnudo en Turquía, la taxonomía de seis registros, y los dos ensayos de Zeynep Renda y Su Yeşil sobre su práctica vivida como modelos de desnudo en Estambul.
El libro se podrá encargar por adelantado antes de la inauguración de la exposición y se distribuirá a través de los canales internacionales de libros de arte. Las bibliotecas universitarias, de museos y las bibliotecas de arte independientes podrán solicitar su adquisición.
Para pedidos anticipados, distribución a bibliotecas o compras institucionales: info@burakbulut.info.
Nota sobre el puesto de comisario
Burak Bulut Yıldırım ejerce como comisario único de Los desnudos de Estambul y no expone su propia obra fotográfica dentro de la selección. Su contribución a la publicación adopta la forma de introducción curatorial: un ensayo de larga extensión que enmarca el proyecto histórica y teóricamente, y dentro de sus catorce años de talleres de arte del desnudo y práctica artística. Este ensayo puede hacer referencia a un número limitado de sus propias imágenes, pero aparecen como parte del marco curatorial, no como obras expuestas. Los catorce fotógrafos mencionados constituyen la totalidad de la exposición.
Ensayo curatorial
El argumento de Los desnudos de Estambul begins with a contradiction that many viewers will not expect. Istanbul — often presented in Western media as a city defined by religious conservatism — has produced, over the past two decades, a sustained and technically accomplished body of nude photography. This work has not reached European audiences at scale, for reasons that are structural rather than artistic: absence of publication infrastructure, absence of dedicated gallery platforms, absence of academic attention.The exhibition addresses that absence directly. Fourteen photographers, all of whom have developed their practice through sustained participation in curated nude art workshops in Istanbul, are presented together for the first time on an international platform. Six of the fourteen are women — a proportion that is significant in the context of a field where, in Turkey, the presence of female photographers working with the nude has been historically almost invisible.The theoretical framework draws on three interlocking thinkers. From Jean Baudrillard, the exhibition borrows the understanding that the image has become its own reality, uncoupled from the body it claims to depict — a useful frame for a moment in which AI-generated nudes circulate more widely than photographed ones. From Laura Mulvey, it takes the foundational critique of the gaze: not to apply it prescriptively, but to acknowledge that every nude photograph in 2026 is made inside that critique's gravitational field. From Maurice Merleau-Ponty, it retains the phenomenological attention to the body as the place where perception happens — not an object viewed from outside, but the very ground of seeing.What the exhibition finally argues is that the photograph of the nude — made in-camera, with physical intervention, in a studio where the body is actually present — remains a meaningful artistic proposition in a moment when most body imagery is algorithmically produced. The body in these photographs is not a motif; it is the material. The light that falls on it is real light. The surface that mediates it is real glass, real fabric, real pigment. This reality is the exhibition's central claim.Taxonomía curatorial
Las obras se organizan en seis registros del cuerpo fotografiado. La secuencia va de la abstracción a la interioridad psicológica: cada registro es una forma distinta de preguntarse qué puede contener una fotografía de un desnudo.
1. Abstracto / Cuerpo fragmentado
El encuadre cerrado, la distorsión de la escala y el alto contraste tonal reducen la figura a geometría compositiva. El cuerpo se convierte en paisaje, topografía, detalle arquitectónico. La identidad se mantiene deliberadamente a distancia.2. Transformación material
Pigmento, pintura, polvo, agua, humo, luz proyectada: los materiales físicos actúan sobre el cuerpo y se registran en una sola exposición. La piel no se representa; se activa.3. Velo / Atmósfera / Asombroso
Telas, materiales translúcidos, bruma controlada y luz atmosférica producen imágenes en las que el cuerpo no es totalmente visible ni está totalmente ausente. El espectador se encuentra en el espacio entre ambos.4. Diálogo espacial
El cuerpo en una arquitectura concreta: interiores domésticos, estructuras abandonadas, recovecos urbanos. El entorno no es un telón de fondo, sino un elemento igual en la composición. La figura y el suelo se negocian.5. Cinético / Performativo
Larga exposición, movimiento coreografiado, danza. El cuerpo se fotografía en su duración, no en el instante congelado. Lo que la imagen registra es un pasaje, no una pose.6. Retrato interior / Cuerpo vulnerable
El registro más íntimo de la exposición. Retratos cercanos, gestos retraídos, el cuerpo en peso emocional. Mientras que los otros cinco registros trabajan a través de la transformación, éste lo hace a través de la atención silenciosa.Beyond the Berlin Presentation
The Berlin exhibition functions as an opening chapter rather than a closed event.
Following the Berlin presentation, the publication will continue its life as an autonomous record through international art book channels, university and museum library acquisitions, and direct distribution. Reading copies are available to curators and academic researchers in advance of formal release.
Future presentations of the project — including potential exhibitions in other European cities and academic programming around the publication — are currently in development. Institutions interested in hosting the exhibition or organising public programming around the book are welcome to enquire.
Curatorial Methodology
The fourteen photographers in Los desnudos de Estambul were not selected through open call. They were invited from a community that has formed across fourteen years of curated nude art workshops in Istanbul, conducted in small groups by the curator. Selection criteria were sustained authorial development across years rather than single sessions, technical and conceptual coherence within each photographer's individual body of work, and a contribution that could be read meaningfully alongside the others rather than in isolation.
The aim was not to assemble a representative survey but to identify a coherent collective practice that has emerged from a specific pedagogical and artistic lineage in Istanbul.
The decision to bring this work to Berlin rather than to present it first in Istanbul reflects a structural condition of the field. Turkey lacks dedicated gallery platforms for nude photography and has not produced a substantial publication on the subject since Alberto Modiano's Türk Fotoğrafında Çıplak in 2004. Several of the participating photographers have been working in this discipline for over a decade without ever exhibiting in their home country.
The Berlin presentation is therefore not a relocation but a first international platform for a body of work that has been made entirely in Istanbul and held there, with limited public visibility, for years.
Bringing fourteen Turkish photographers to a Berlin opening also involves practical conditions that are part of the curatorial work itself. Schengen visa applications, travel coordination, and the logistical scaffolding required to make this kind of collective international presentation possible have been carried as part of the project. These are not framed here as obstacles but as components of a curatorial practice that takes the geography of contemporary photography seriously: who can move, where work can be shown, and what platforms remain open or closed to which artists.
Theoretical References
The curatorial framework draws on the following primary references.
- Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press, 1994.
- Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books, 1972.
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, 2012 (originally 1945).
- Modiano, Alberto. Türk Fotoğrafında Çıplak. Bileşim Yayınevi, Istanbul, 2004.
- Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16:3, 1975.
- Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
Additional historical and contemporary references appear in the publication's curatorial introduction.
Press & Institutional Enquiries
Press materials — including high-resolution images, curatorial statement in English, German, and Turkish, photographer biographies, and a factual press release — are available on request. The exhibition is open to journalist previews, interview requests, and academic visits during the exhibition period and by arrangement for scheduled press days.
Serán especialmente bienvenidos comisarios, críticos de arte e investigadores académicos que trabajen en fotografía contemporánea, arte del desnudo, cultura visual turca o políticas del cuerpo. Antes de la inauguración se facilitarán ejemplares de lectura de la publicación.
Curatorial statement
Photographer biographies
Press release