Lucida

The Body as Light

Under blacklight, the body becomes not flesh but flare—a glow, an echo, a mirage. Lucida seeks the threshold where form dissolves into radiance.

Lucida is not about light—it is about transformation. The series captures bodies dissolving into glow, myth, and pigment, exploring the luminous threshold where visibility itself becomes unstable. Each image is a ritual, a rite of passage between the seen and the felt.

Shot under ultraviolet light with fluorescent body paints, the series marks a radical departure from Burak Bulut Yıldırım’s architectural nude compositions. Here, the body is no longer a form to be documented but a surface to be activated—a screen on which light performs. The familiar anatomical landmarks dissolve into fields of colour and luminescence.

The series draws from multiple visual traditions. Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms offer one precedent: the body subsumed into pattern, the self multiplied into cosmos. Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro provides another: the drama of light carving form from absolute darkness. But Lucida pushes further toward abstraction. Flesh becomes nebula; skin becomes screen. The body is not illuminated—it becomes the source of illumination.

The imagery draws on mythological and ritualistic associations without illustrating any specific tradition. Faces become masks; bodies become icons of an invented cosmology. The fluorescent patterns transform human anatomy into something that feels ancient and futuristic simultaneously—tribal markings translated into the language of neon, sacred geometry rendered in phosphorescence.

Movement enters through long exposure. Bodies blur and multiply, their trajectories traced in streaks of light. These images refuse the frozen instant; they accumulate time, showing the body not as object but as event. The reference here shifts toward the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey, though translated into a hallucinatory register where science becomes ritual.

The project was exhibited as part of In Haste / Ayaküstü at the VoBa & Abraham-Gumbel-Saal in 2019, and continues as an ongoing collaboration with dancers, performers, and body artists. Selected works are available as limited edition archival prints through Artsper, Saatchi Art, and Artmajeur.