Curatorial Project — Upcoming Exhibition & Publication
The Nudes of Istanbul
İstanbul’un Çıplakları
A Collective Manifesto from Istanbul’s Nude Art Workshops
Die Akt Galerie, Берлин
3 – 19 July 2026
Friday, 3 July 2026, 19:00
Бурак Булут Йылдырым
14 photographers from Istanbul
ISBN hardcover, English
The Nudes of Istanbul proposes that this invisibility is now materially untrue. Over thirteen years of curated nude art workshops in Istanbul — conducted in small groups, with emphasis on lighting design, compositional discipline, and long-form authorial development — a collective body of work has accumulated that deserves to be read as a contemporary chapter of international nude photography, not as an isolated or peripheral practice.
This exhibition and its accompanying publication bring together fourteen photographers from that extended community. Their work, made in Istanbul over the past decade and a half, is presented not as documentation of a workshop series but as an artistic proposition in its own right — a collective visual memory of what nude photography has been able to become in a geography where the conditions for its making have remained structurally difficult.
Selected Works from the Exhibition
A preview of works by the fourteen participating photographers.
Curatorial Essay
The argument of The Nudes of Istanbul 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.
Curatorial Taxonomy
The works are organised across six registers of the photographed body. The sequence moves from abstraction toward psychological interiority — each register a different way of asking what a nude photograph can hold.
1. Abstract / Fragmented Body
Close framing, scale distortion, and high tonal contrast reduce the figure to compositional geometry. The body becomes landscape, topography, architectural detail. Identity is held deliberately at a distance.
2. Material Transformation
Pigment, paint, powder, water, smoke, projected light — physical materials act on the body and are recorded in a single exposure. The skin is not represented; it is activated.
3. Veil / Atmosphere / Uncanny
Fabric, translucent materials, controlled haze, and atmospheric light produce images in which the body is not fully visible and not fully absent. The viewer is held in the space between the two.
4. Spatial Dialogue
The body in specific architecture — domestic interiors, abandoned structures, urban recesses. The environment is not a backdrop but an equal element in the composition. Figure and ground negotiate.
5. Kinetic / Performative
Long exposure, choreographed movement, dance. The body is photographed in duration, not in the frozen instant. What the image records is a passage, not a pose.
6. Inner Portrait / Vulnerable Body
The most intimate register of the exhibition. Close portraits, withdrawn gestures, the body in emotional weight. Where the other five registers work through transformation, this one works through quiet attention.
Exhibition
Die Akt Galerie
Krossener Str. 34, 10245 Berlin, Germany
3 – 19 July 2026
Friday, 3 July 2026, 19:00
Friday – Sunday, 15:00 – 19:00
15-minute walk from S+U Warschauer Straße · short walk from U Samariterstraße (U5)
Бесплатно
Participating Photographers
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.
- Adem Tayfun
- Burak Özcan
- Cem Özaral
- Didem Okumuş
- Enis Onur
- Mehmet Akif Yalın
- Mehmet Naci Demirkol
- Mertkan Hergül
- Мерим Айдин
- Neslihan Bilginer
- Nevra Topalismailoglu
- Ozan Dengiz
- Selda Bal Coşar
- Umut Altun
Model Contributors to the Publication
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.
- Zeynep Renda — principal essay on the lived practice of nude modelling in Istanbul over the past decade
- Su Yeşil — second contribution on the experience of nude modelling as a plus-size model in Istanbul
Publication
The exhibition is accompanied by a hardcover photobook published with ISBN registration and international distribution. The book is printed in English, designed to function as an autonomous record of the project independent of the exhibition itself. Each of the fourteen participating photographers is represented through a dedicated selection. The publication also includes a substantial curatorial introduction by Burak Bulut Yıldırım, a historical framing of nude photography in Turkey, the six-register taxonomy, and the two essays by Zeynep Renda and Su Yeşil on their lived practice as nude models in Istanbul.
The book will be available for pre-order prior to the exhibition opening and distributed through international art book channels. Library acquisition enquiries from university libraries, museum libraries, and independent art libraries are welcomed.
For pre-order, library distribution, or institutional purchase enquiries: contact@meryemaydin.co.
A Note on the Curatorial Position
Burak Bulut Yıldırım serves as the sole curator of The Nudes of Istanbul and does not exhibit his own photographic work within the selection. His contribution to the publication takes the form of the curatorial introduction: a long-form essay that frames the project historically, theoretically, and within his fourteen years of nude art workshops and artistic practice. This essay may reference a limited number of his own images, but they appear as part of the curatorial framing, not as exhibited works. The fourteen photographers named above constitute the exhibition in full.
Press & Institutional Enquiries
Press materials — including high-resolution images, curatorial statement in English, German, and Turkish, photographer biographies, and 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.
Curators, art critics, and academic researchers working in contemporary photography, nude art, Turkish visual culture, or body politics are particularly welcomed. Reading copies of the publication can be provided in advance of the opening.
Press enquiries and institutional contact: info@burakbulut.info