UnNude: The Architecture of the Body
A Photography Exhibition at Die Akt Galerie Berlin

The Body as Sculpture: Opening of the “UnNude” Exhibition

WHAT: UnNude: The Architecture of the Body – Photography Exhibition
WHEN: September 05–28, 2025
Friday- Saturday–Sunday, 3:00 PM–7:00 PM
WHERE: Die Akt Galerie, Krossener Str. 34, 10245 Berlin
Getting There: A ~15-min walk from S+U Warschauer Straße station and a short walk from U Samariterstraße (U5) station.
Die Akt Galerie Google MAP: maps.app.goo.gl/cX2Nru3Q
ADMISSION: Free
You are invited to the opening of “UnNude,” an exhibition reinterpreting the human form through sculptural abstraction by Berlin-based photographer Burak Bulut Yıldırım. On the opening night, meet the artist and experience the “breathing photographs” video installation.

burakbulut.org/unnude  /  instagram.com/burak.bulut.yildirim

UnNude

UnNude changes how we look at the body, rather than just showing it. Made over nineteen years, the series removes the face and softens signs of identity. Here, skin becomes a line, a fold becomes volume, and a shadow becomes a hollow space.

Working in black and white with hard light and tight framing, the images purposefully distort our sense of scale. A dip in a back looks like a valley; the ridge of an elbow, an architectural drawing. This disorientation turns the body into a landscape and asks for a tactile way of seeing. The photograph’s grain, fine hairs, and sharp contrasts make the texture of the surface feel present (similar to what Laura U. Marks calls “haptic visuality”).

The abstract forms connect to a modernist history: Rodin’s fragments,  In photography, the work echoes Bill Brandt’s play with scale, Edward Weston’s comparison of dunes and bodies, and Mapplethorpe’s sculptural light. Yet the project relies less on specific influences and more on the basic tools of photography itself: light’s ability to define form and the frame’s power to disorient.

A single-channel video in the installation brings time back to the still photographs. Short clips, filmed with the same light and pose as each photo, are slowed down until the image’s own “breath” is visible. The print captures form; the video reveals life. The exhibition moves between sculpture and cinema, space and time.

UnNude does not avoid sensuality; it separates it from the idea of consumption and turns it into attentive looking. Viewers are invited to look past portraiture and identity, and instead to read and measure the images as one might study a map or a sculpture.

Limited Edition. Archival pigment prints are available in limited editions of five, plus one artist’s proof (5+1). They can be purchased through platforms like Artsper.com and SaatchiArt.com (search: Burak Bulut Yıldırım). Prints can also be bought directly via PayPal for 40% less than the platforms price. For information, contact: contact@meryemaydin.co

This exhibition at Die Akt Galerie, Berlin, is the first major gallery presentation of the nineteen-year project, running from 5–28 September 2025.

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Burak Bulut Yıldırım is a Berlin-based fine-art photographer and a Sony Europe Imaging Ambassador (2018–2025). His work has been exhibited across Europe.