Press Release · For Immediate Release · · Berlin, Germany

Project page: burakbulut.org/the-nudes-of-istanbul

PRESS MEDIA KIT: MEDIA KIT

The Nudes of Istanbul: A Fourteen-Year Collective Nude Photography Practice from Istanbul Opens at Die Akt Galerie Berlin, 3-19 July 2026

The Nudes of Istanbul is a group exhibition and accompanying English-language photobook curated by Berlin-based photographer Burak Bulut Yıldırım. The project brings fourteen photographers and three model-authors into public view at Die Akt Galerie, Berlin, between 3 and 19 July 2026, opening Friday 3 July at 19:00. All works were made in Istanbul over the last fourteen years, many with Turkish models working in fine-art nude photography, inside a long-running studio practice built on real bodies, controlled light, physical materials and explicit written consent.

  • Exhibition: The Nudes of Istanbul / İstanbul'un Çıplakları
  • Venue: Die Akt Galerie, Krossener Str. 34, 10245 Berlin, Germany
  • Dates: 3-19 July 2026
  • Opening: Friday, 3 July 2026, 19:00
  • Gallery hours: Friday-Sunday, 15:00-19:00
  • Admission: Free
  • Curator:
  • Photographers: 14 (five women)
  • Model-authors: Zeynep Renda, Su Yeşil, Marmelat
  • Publication: English-language hardcover photobook, planned with ISBN registration
  • Press contact: info@burakbulut.info

A Fourteen-Year Practice from Istanbul, Now Public in Berlin

Die Akt Galerie Berlin will present The Nudes of Istanbul from 3 to 19 July 2026, a group exhibition that brings a fourteen-year collective fine-art nude photography practice from Istanbul into public view for the first time. Curated by Berlin-based photographer, artist and educator Burak Bulut Yıldırım, the exhibition gathers fourteen photographers whose works were produced in Istanbul inside a long-running studio structure built around lighting design, set construction, model direction, physical materials and camera-based authorship.

All exhibition works were made in Istanbul across the past fourteen years, many with Turkish models working in fine-art nude photography. The location is not a neutral detail. The project emerged in a social climate where the public visibility of nude imagery has become increasingly difficult, yet it does not turn that difficulty into spectacle. It treats the social weight of the nude body as one of the conditions under which the work was produced.

The project grows out of Yıldırım's nearly twenty years of work with the nude as an artistic subject. Across that period, he has worked with hundreds of models and produced hundreds of thousands of nude-art frames, while exhibiting body-based fine-art works in several European contexts including Berlin, London, Heilbronn, Zurich, Barcelona, Rome, Thessaloniki and Istanbul. Since opening his first studio in Istanbul in 2005, Yıldırım has worked across body-based fine-art projects, photographer education and curator-led production environments. For the past fourteen years in Istanbul, he has transmitted that discipline through concept-led nude art workshops, working with hundreds of photographers across different visual premises, lighting structures and studio situations. The full project page is at burakbulut.org/the-nudes-of-istanbul.

Why Berlin: The Opening Chapter of Public Circulation

Berlin is not used here as a neutral European frame. It is a city in which bodies, migration, sexuality, image culture and artistic freedom are already in active public negotiation. Die Akt Galerie offers a precise context because its programme is dedicated to art-photographic work on the body. The exhibition therefore does not move Istanbul to Berlin as an exotic subject. It brings a practice made in Istanbul into a place where it can be read within a wider conversation on photography, consent, authorship, migration, visibility and the politics of the visible body.

Berlin is the opening chapter of the project's public circulation. After the Berlin presentation, The Nudes of Istanbul is intended to continue through book presentations, exhibitions, public conversations, institutional collaborations and academic programming in Turkey and selected European cities.

How the Fourteen Photographers Were Selected

The fourteen photographers were not selected through an open call. They were selected from a collective field formed across fourteen years of curator-directed photographic production in Istanbul. Selection was based on continuity of participation, technical and visual coherence, distinctness of photographic decision-making and the ability of each photographer's work to contribute to a collective body without dissolving into it. The participating photographers are not assistants or documenters of someone else's scene. They are photographers whose differences in framing, distance, rhythm, restraint and psychological temperature become visible through shared working conditions.

The participating photographers are Adem Tayfun Eser, Burak Özcan, İbrahim Cem Özoral, Didem Okumuş, Enis Onur, Mehmet Akif Yalın, Mehmet Naci Demirkol, Mertkan Hergül, Meryem Aydın, Neslihan Bilginer, Nevra Topalismailoğlu, Ozan Dengiz, Selda Bal Coşar and Umut Altun. Five of the fourteen are women. In a field whose recorded exhibition history was, until recently, overwhelmingly male, that number is not a symbolic detail. It changes the internal architecture of the project.

The Curator's Position and the Question of Authorship

Across fourteen years, Burak Bulut Yıldırım developed the conceptual premises, lighting environments, casting decisions, set structures and material conditions through which the photographs were made. The final image, however, belongs to the individual photographer: to their frame, distance, timing, attention, tonal decision and moment of release. This division of authorship is not treated as a weakness to be hidden. It is the working model itself. Shared conditions do not erase authorship; they make differences in attention, framing, distance, rhythm and psychological temperature more visible.

Yıldırım's long-term use of controlled light, physical material, model direction, UV-reactive pigments, reflective surfaces, long exposure, optical distortion and studio-built visual premises forms the conceptual and technical ground from which this project developed. His curatorial line was previously presented in LandsNude at Artcore Gallery, Thessaloniki, in 2015. The Nudes of Istanbul extends that curatorial line into a larger publication and exhibition structure.

From the Curator

"This exhibition is not about Turkey. It is from Turkey. The body in these photographs is real, the light is real, and the people who stood in that light are part of the work's history. The book could not be only a sequence of images; the models also needed to speak from inside the practice."

— Burak Bulut Yıldırım, Curator, Berlin, 2026

Six Categories of the Photographed Body

The works are organised across six categories that describe different ways in which a body can operate inside a photograph. These are not style labels alone. They name six modes of presence. A photograph is placed according to its primary visual force, not simply according to what appears inside the frame.

Surface

Light, form, contour, volume, curvature and the tactile feeling of skin and photographic surface. Surface names form.

Matter

Paint, water, fabric, light, reflection, pigment and physical materials acting with the body. Matter names contact.

Opacity

Tulle, haze, covering, glass, shadow, water or translucent surfaces partially conceal the figure. Opacity names interrupted visibility.

Rooms

The body in relation to beds, windows, doors, walls and interior space. Rooms names interior pressure.

Duration

Movement, time, balance, falling, resistance, muscle tension, dance and long exposure. Duration names time and physical tension.

Self-Possession

The body protects its own presence, boundary, gaze or inwardness. Self-Possession names the body as held by the person within the image.

Model-Authors: The Person in the Light Also Speaks

The accompanying publication includes commissioned texts by three model-authors. Their presence in the book is not decorative and not explanatory. It is structural. Nude photography has historically been written from the position of the photographer, critic or historian. Here, the person who stood in the light also speaks from inside the practice.

Zeynep Renda

Zeynep Renda writes from inside a decade-long modelling practice: trust, boundaries, contracts, the need to see the image while posing, the difference between unsafe and professional working conditions, and the shift from being photographed by others toward becoming a self-portrait artist.

Su Yeşil

Su Yeşil writes through the body as lived experience: family reaction, shame, gendered norms, body dysphoria, movement, nature, performance, and the refusal to reduce nudity to sexuality. Her position contributes a queer, non-binary and body-political perspective to the publication.

Marmelat

Marmelat, writing under a chosen pseudonym, brings a further position to the project: the experience of a Turkish nude model who has worked for three years within a fine arts faculty, addressing the rarely documented question of academic nude modelling in Turkey.

Together, the texts reposition the model not as silent subject matter, but as witness, collaborator and author. Zeynep Renda and Su Yeşil write under their own names. Marmelat writes under a chosen pseudonym in line with her preferred level of public visibility.

The Publication: An Autonomous Book, Not a Catalogue

The publication is conceived as an autonomous book-length English-language hardcover photobook, planned with ISBN registration, rather than a standard exhibition catalogue. Each of the fourteen participating photographers is represented through a dedicated selection. The book includes the curator's foreword and extended curatorial essay, a historical framing of nude photography in Turkey, the six-category structure, commissioned texts by the three model-authors, and a selected bibliography that situates the project within photographic, theoretical and Turkish art-historical references.

The book is intended for art book circulation, direct distribution, institutional outreach, academic reference, selected library acquisition proposals, and future public programming. Pre-order, publisher, library distribution and institutional purchase information will be announced before the exhibition opening.

Historical Position: From an Intermittent Tradition to a Sustained Practice

Fine-art nude photography in Turkey has a documented exhibition history but not a stable institutional tradition. Its public presence has appeared through intermittent solo exhibitions, scattered catalogues, limited critical writing and very little book-length publication. In that history, the nude photograph has often remained either an isolated formal study or a difficult image to place in public view.

The Nudes of Istanbul does not claim to close that historical gap. It marks the point at which a different conversation becomes possible: a sustained collective practice, fourteen photographers, five women participants, three model-authors, and a body of work made in Istanbul over more than a decade. The project claims something precise: that over fourteen years, a collective practice formed; that the work is serious enough to leave the room in which it was made; and that the public discussion now needs to include the photographers, the models, the conditions and the bodies that made it possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Nudes of Istanbul?

It is a group exhibition and accompanying English-language photobook presenting a fourteen-year collective fine-art nude photography practice developed in Istanbul and brought into public view in Berlin at Die Akt Galerie between 3 and 19 July 2026.

Who curated the exhibition?

The exhibition and the accompanying book are curated by Burak Bulut Yıldırım, a Berlin-based photographer, artist and educator who has worked with the nude as an artistic subject for nearly twenty years. He is not the Turkish pop singer of a similar name; he is a photographer and curator.

Why is it important that all the works were made in Istanbul?

The location is part of the work's real conditions. The photographs were made in a city where the public visibility of nude imagery has become increasingly difficult, many with Turkish models working in fine-art nude photography. The project does not dramatise this context; it treats it as one of the conditions under which the work was produced.

Why is the project presented in Berlin?

Berlin is the opening chapter of the project's public circulation. It offers a context in which the work can be read within wider conversations around photography, consent, authorship, migration, visibility and the body. Die Akt Galerie is dedicated to art-photographic work on the body, which makes it a precise Berlin context for the project.

How does the project relate to AI-generated imagery?

At a time when synthetic sexualised body imagery circulates at industrial scale, often without consent, the project insists on camera-based photography: real bodies, real light, real materials and explicit permissions. No exhibition image is AI-generated, and AI training is excluded from the rights and consent framework.

What are the six categories?

Surface, Matter, Opacity, Rooms, Duration and Self-Possession. They describe different ways in which the body operates inside a photograph: as form, contact, interrupted visibility, interior pressure, time and physical tension, or a self-held presence.

Is the publication an exhibition catalogue?

No. It is an autonomous English-language hardcover photobook, planned with ISBN registration, designed for art book circulation, institutional outreach, academic use and selected library acquisition proposals.

Who are the model-authors?

Zeynep Renda, Su Yeşil and Marmelat. They contribute commissioned texts that reposition the model from silent subject matter to witness, collaborator and author. Marmelat writes under a chosen pseudonym and addresses nude modelling within a Turkish fine arts faculty.

Press Contact, Interviews and Image Use

Press images, photographer biographies, curatorial material, publication previews, advance reading copies and interview availability are available on request. Curators, art critics, editors, publishers, library acquisition teams and academic researchers working in contemporary photography, nude art, Turkish visual culture, gender, image politics, body-based practice, publication histories or collective authorship are particularly welcome.

Burak Bulut Yıldırım is available for written Q&A, email interviews, phone or video interviews, in-person interviews in Berlin by appointment, curator-led walkthroughs, institutional conversations and academic visits. Languages: Turkish and English. German-language interview requests can be arranged with translation support when needed.

Press use of individual images is granted only on request and is conditional on full credit to the named photographer, the exhibition title and, where required, the curator and gallery. Press images must not be materially altered, used outside the approved context, or processed through generative AI tools.

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