The Nudes of Istanbul: A New Art Book Curated by Burak Bulut Yildirim
- Jul 6
- 4 min read
Updated: 18 hours ago
The Nudes of Istanbul is an art book and exhibition at Die Akt Galerie in Berlin.
A rare collective fine-art nude photography publication and exhibition from Turkey
Fourteen photographers. Three model-authors. Fourteen years of body-based photographic production in Istanbul. An English-language hardcover publication and Berlin exhibition bringing a sustained collective practice into international circulation.
"This is the second collective nude art book published in Turkey’s 103-year history as a republic, and one of only 3–5 nude art photography books ever published. Three Turkish nude art models have also written about what it’s like to be a nude art model in Turkey for the first time in a book. As far as I know, no nude art books had been published during the conservative-totalitarian leadership that has dominated the country for the past 20 years; this is the first of its kind". - Burak Bulut Yildrim
The Nudes of Istanbul is a collective fine-art nude photography project formed across fourteen years of curator-directed photographic practice in Istanbul. It brings together fourteen photographers whose works were made within shared physical conditions: real bodies, real light, constructed sets, material interventions, model presence, and the discipline of photographing the body in a room held through consent.
The project is not a national survey of nude photography in Turkey, nor a personal exhibition by the curator. It focuses on one specific lineage: a long-term collective practice shaped by repeated photographic productions in Istanbul, where the curatorial framework, lighting environment, casting decisions, and material conditions were developed by Burak Bulut Yıldırım, while the final image belonged to each photographer's frame, distance, timing, attention, and decision.
The Berlin exhibition is the opening chapter of the project's public circulation. The accompanying publication is conceived as an autonomous book-length record, independent of any single venue, and intended for art book circulation, institutional outreach, academic use, and selected library acquisition proposals. After Berlin, London is being developed as a priority next context for UK-facing press outreach, institutional conversations, book presentation possibilities, and future exhibition enquiries.
At a moment when synthetic and AI-generated body imagery has become increasingly normalized, The Nudes of Istanbul insists on the physical event of photography. The body in these images is not generated, simulated, or abstracted into data. It is present. It has consented. It has occupied the room. The light is real light; the surface is real skin, fabric, glass, pigment, water, shadow, and breath.
"For fourteen years, we worked in Istanbul with Turkish models, Turkish photographers, and explicit consent. I did not want this project to treat the model as silent subject matter. Their voices had to be part of the book. With fourteen photographers from Istanbul, five women participants, and texts by three model-authors, The Nudes of Istanbul brings into public view a sustained collective practice from a field that has remained only thinly visible in Turkey".
— Burak Bulut Yıldırım, Curator
Burak Bulut Yıldırım is the sole curator of The Nudes of Istanbul and does not exhibit his own photographic work within the selection.
The project rests on his twenty-year practice in fine-art nude, portraiture, body-based photography, advanced lighting, and constructed studio image-making. Since opening his first studio in Istanbul in 2005, Yıldırım has worked across commercial photography, fine-art body-based projects, photographer education, and curator-led production environments. For close to twenty years he has photographed hundreds of models in hundreds of thousands of fine-art nude frames; exhibited this work across several European cities; and, in Istanbul, transmitted this experience for fourteen years through nude art workshops in different conceptual formats to hundreds of photographers. His 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.
The Nudes of Istanbul is his second curatorial project after LandsNude, presented at Artcore Gallery in Thessaloniki in 2015. In both projects, the body is approached not as a decorative motif but as a site where light, space, material, authorship, and cultural visibility meet.
His role in The Nudes of Istanbul is not to replace the authorship of the participating photographers. It is to define the curatorial field in which their authorship becomes readable: the premise, the environment, the ethical conditions, the selection, the taxonomy, and the publication framework. The publication is not an exhibition catalogue. It is conceived as an autonomous book-length record of a rare collective fine-art nude photography practice from Turkey.
The exhibition is accompanied by an English-language hardcover photobook planned with ISBN registration. The book is designed to function independently of the exhibition, with each of the fourteen participating photographers represented through a dedicated selection. The publication includes a foreword and an extended curatorial essay by Burak Bulut Yıldırım, a historical framing of nude photography in Turkey drawing on Alberto Modiano's edited volume Türk Fotoğrafında Çıplak (2004) and Işık Özdal's 2011 academic survey Türk Fotoğrafında Nü Sergilerin Analizi, the six-register taxonomy used to organize the work, and three commissioned essays by Zeynep Renda, Su Yeşil, and Marmelat.
This structure positions the project as a sustained collective practice shaped by shared conditions and distinct photographic authorship. It also recognizes the models not as silent subject matter but as witnesses, collaborators, and authors of the book's intellectual and ethical structure. The book is intended for art book circulation, direct distribution, institutional outreach, academic reference, and selected library acquisition proposals. Pre-order, publisher, library distribution, and institutional purchase information will be announced before the exhibition opening.
For ordering, library distribution, publisher, or institutional purchase enquiries: info@burakbulut.info
