Istanbul-Based Fine-Art Body Photography Project Opens in Berlin

Title of your press release:
Istanbul-Based Fine-Art Body Photography Project Opens in Berlin

Text of your press release:
Berlin, June 2026 - Die Akt Galerie Berlin will present a group exhibition and accompanying English-language hardcover photobook from 3 to 19 July 2026, bringing a fourteen-year Istanbul-based fine-art body photography practice into public view in Berlin.

Curated by Berlin-based photographer and curator Burak Bulut Yıldırım, the project brings together 14 Turkish photographers selected from a sustained curator-directed studio practice in Istanbul. Five of the participating photographers are women. The accompanying publication includes not only photographs, but also texts by three model-authors writing from inside the practice: Zeynep Renda, Su Yeşil and Marmelat.

The project's central fact is direct: these works were made in Istanbul, with models working in fine-art body photography, by photographers working from a sustained collective practice in the city, over a period of fourteen years. The exhibition and book bring that collective body of work into public circulation in Berlin for the first time.

The location is not a neutral detail. The photographs were produced in a social context in which the public visibility of body-based imagery has become increasingly difficult. The project does not turn that difficulty into spectacle. It treats it as one of the real conditions under which the work was made: the city, the studio, the model, the light, the permission and the decision to make the body visible.

The participating photographers are Adem Tayfun Eser, Burak Özcan, İbrahim Cem Özoral, Didem Ergezer, Enis Onur, Mehmet Akif Yalın, Mehmet Naci Demirkol, Mertkan Hergül, Meryem Aydın, Neslihan Bilginer, Nevra Topalismailoğlu, Ozan Dengiz, Selda Bal Coşar and Umut Altun.

The exhibition is not presented as a general exhibition about Turkey or a national survey. It is a public record of a long-term collective practice that developed in Istanbul through real bodies, real light, constructed sets, physical materials, model presence and the discipline of photographing the body through explicit consent.

The accompanying English-language hardcover photobook is conceived as an autonomous book-length publication rather than a standard exhibition catalogue. It includes a foreword and extended curatorial essay by Burak Bulut Yıldırım, a historical framing of body-based photography in Turkey, six categories of the photographed body - Surface, Matter, Opacity, Rooms, Duration and Self-Possession - and texts by three model-authors.

The model-author texts are central to the project. Zeynep Renda writes from inside a long modelling practice, addressing trust, boundaries, contracts, professional working conditions and the move toward becoming a self-portrait artist. Su Yeşil writes through the body as lived experience, addressing family reaction, shame, gendered norms, body dysphoria, movement, nature and performance. Marmelat, writing under a chosen pseudonym, brings a further position to the project: the experience of a Turkish model who has also worked within a fine arts faculty.

Together, these texts shift the model from silent subject matter to witness, collaborator and author. In this project, the photographed body is not only an image. It belongs to a person who consented, posed, waited, moved, resisted and held the room.

The exhibition opens at a moment when AI-generated and synthetic body imagery circulates at industrial scale, often without consent. Against that background, the project insists on the photograph as a camera-based artistic act: a real body, real light, real materials, a room, a model and a set of explicit permissions. No exhibition image is AI-generated. AI training and synthetic-image use are explicitly excluded from the project's written rights and consent framework.

Exhibition details:
Die Akt Galerie, Krossener Str. 34, 10245 Berlin, Germany
3-19 July 2026
Opening: Friday, 3 July 2026, 19:00
Gallery hours: Friday-Sunday, 15:00-19:00
Admission: Free

Press contact:
Burak Bulut Yıldırım
Email: [info@burakbulut.info](mailto:info@burakbulut.info)
Website: https://burakbulut.org

ABOUT / Portrait of the company:
Burak Bulut Yıldırım is a Berlin-based photographer and curator whose long-term practice examines the body, light, surface and the instability of figurative representation. Active since 2005, he works across fine-art photography, exhibition-making and image-led curatorial research. For this project, he serves as curator, editor of the accompanying publication, and author of the book's foreword and extended curatorial essay.

Caption:
Istanbul-based fine-art body photography project, Die Akt Galerie Berlin, 3-19 July 2026

Notes:
Please publish as soon as possible. The exhibition opens in Berlin on 3 July 2026.

Burak Bulut Yıldırım
Email: info@burakbulut.info
Telephone: +49 176 62852187
Website: https://burakbulut.org

Burak Bulut Yıldırım is a Berlin-based photographer and curator whose long-term practice examines the body, light, surface and the instability of figurative representation. Active since 2005, he works across fine-art photography, exhibition-making and image-led curatorial research. For this project, he serves as curator, editor of the accompanying publication, and author of the book's foreword and extended curatorial essay.

This release was published on openPR.