Exhibitions

CHARLES FRÉGER

ALT – Yapı Kredi bomontiada,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

The work of French photographer Charles Fréger (*1975) is considered groundbreaking in the complex genre of contemporary portraiture. In extensive series he portrays individual members of social groups – be it sports clubs, army corps or professional guilds – who demonstrate their affiliation to the specific collective through external signs such as uniforms, headdress, make-up, posture or even their body shape. In his work Fréger explores the extent to which organised communities melt into a single collective body and carefully studies and reflects the interplay between individuality and social affiliation.

Fréger’s acclaimed series Wildermann led him to eighteen European countries in search of the mythological figure of the wild man since 2010: Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Switzerland, Finland and Romania. The transformation of human to beast is a central aspect in pagan rituals passed down over the centuries that celebrate the turn of the seasons, fertility, life and death – some still alive today in carnival or Advent traditions. The costumes often represent the devil, billy-goats, wild boars or the Grim Reaper; they utilize masks, horns, bells, animal materials such as fur and bones, and plant materials such as straw and pine twigs.

Charles Fréger, Iltis, Buschwiller, France, from the Wilder Mann series.

COOPER & GORFER

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Cooper & Gorfer comprises the artists Sarah Cooper (US, 1974) and Nina Gorfer (Austria, 1979). Their work focuses on the female aspects of cultural identity. Based on the stories and lives of the women they meet and collaborated with, Cooper & Gorfer explore issues of power, gender, memory, migration, dislocation, and the malleability of identity.

The artist duo is known for their distinct hybrid portraits. Their photo-based collages are anchored in an anthropological research of people, place and the genius loci. They reimagine the tradition of portraiture by visually examining and deconstructing the narrative of those they portray. Like art history’s Mannerists and Surrealists or literature’s Magical Realism, Cooper & Gorfer strain observable reality through a complex psychological filter of memories, moods and wounds.

Cooper & Gorfer began their collaboration in 2006. They live and work in Gothenburg, Sweden and Berlin, Germany.

Cooper & Gorfer have had several solo exhibitions, among others, at Fotografiska Stockholm, Hasselblad Center Gothenburg, Kulturhuset Stockholm, Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt and the National Museum of Photography Copenhagen. Cooper & Gorfer’s work is included in several private and museum collections, including the National Gallery of Iceland. They have been awarded the German Photo Book Award 2018, and are Hasselblad Ambassadors.

INTERRUPTIONS

Interruptions portrays several generations of women from Swedish Sápmi. Stretching over the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia, Sápmi occupies an area almost the size of Sweden. The manner in which the Sámi people of Sweden have been treated since the 16th century when the Swedish state began colonising the north is a dark chapter in the country’s history. Colonisation does not only affect geographic areas – fundamental characteristics of a people such as its culture, language and traditions are also dismantled and eradicated.

In common with Cooper & Gorfer’s other series, clothes and objects of symbolic significance play an important role in Interruptions. The eponymous protagonist of the portrait Ingá Elisa with Reconstructed Dress has a map of the treasures of Malmberget woven into her garments. Katarina in Katarina in Blue raises her hand in which she has written the word Fábmo, Lule Sámi for “power” or “strength”. Around her little finger a red thread winds itself down into her clothes, as straight as artificial borders drawn with a ruler.

Like fragments of historical and present time, the multifaceted human being is also interwoven in Cooper & Gorfer’s work. Many of the portrayed women bear their own stories of illness, conflicts or other individual hardships.

Cooper & Gorfer, Aana and the String of Pearls, 2016.

NIELS ACKERMANN & SÉBASTIEN GOBERT

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Niels Ackermann is a Swiss documentary photographer working for international press since 2007 and a founding member of agency Lundi13.

He lives between Kyiv, Ukraine and Geneva, Switzerland.

His first long term project, The White Angel, documenting the transition to adulthood in the neighbourhood of Chernobyl was published by Les Éditions Noir sur Blanc in 2016 and received multiple awards.

His second project: Looking for Lenin made together with french journalist Sébastien Gobert was published by Fuel Publishing (London) and Les Éditions Noir sur Blanc and premiered at the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles.

Niels also regularly partners with social, environmental and cultural institutions on documentary projects and workshops. He also gives frequent conferences and workshops on documentary photography, freelancing and fundings of documentary projects.

LOOKING FOR LENIN
NIELS ACKERMANN & SÉBASTIEN GOBERT

“Lenin lives! Lenin is with you!” Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, this hymn has been more than an ever-present slogan. But as Russia prepares to celebrate the centennial of the October Revolution, Ukraine, the other pillar of the Soviet Empire, will have none of him. Summum of decommunization: as of late 2016, none of the 5,500 statues that formerly dotted the territory is still standing. Lenin has left the square. His face no longer overlooks the metro station. Since the summer of 2015, Niels Ackermann and Sébastien Gobert left to travel through Ukraine in search of crumbled stone and fragments of metal. By means of a collection of photographs, halfway between documentary and symbolism, the authors create a catalogue and typology of this decommunization, capturing the issues of memory for this country that is seeking itself.

Niels Ackermann / Lundi13, from the series Looking for Lenin.

ILONA SZWARC

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Ilona Szwarc is a photographer and artist based in Los Angeles, California. Szwarc received an MFA in Photography from Yale University and a BFA from School of Visual Arts.

Szwarc has been awarded the Richard Benson Prize for Excellence in Photography, the Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, the World Press Photo. Most recently she was chosen as a FOAM Talent.

She has exhibited in the US and internationally, with recent exhibitions at Shulamit Nazarian and Regen Projects in Los Angeles, Danziger Gallery in New York and at the International Festival for Photography and Fashion in Hyeres, France.

Szwarc’s photographs have been featured in numerous publications worldwide including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, TIME, The UK Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine, Marie Claire, National Geographic, Surface and Nylon.

Ilona Szwarc, from the series Rodeo Girls.

ALİ BİLGE AKKAYA

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Ali Bilge Akkaya presents the perfect composition as he blends his impeccable symmetrical sensibilities with an instintinctive and random approach. He narrates the locations to the viewer with the emotions they bring along. The artist traces unusual architecture amidst peculiar landscapes, employing optical illusions in order to play with the perception of space.

The young artist remained faithful to a consistent story in his three solo exhibitions at x-ist, focusing on new narrative forms as a part of the style he has cultivated over time. The ordinary environments that he chooses are transformed into striking spaces, through his unique perspective. The feelings of solitude and being lost, that these spaces inhabit, carry traces of the artist’s own adventure of sensing his own universe.

Ali Bilge Akkaya was born in 1988 in Istanbul. He studied at Central Saint Martins Art and Design School, London for his master’s degree after graduating in industrial design from Yeditepe University, in 2012. Ali Bilge Akkaya collaborates with designers and sculptors on a range of different projects. He opened his solo shows titled One (2014) and Two or Realistic Stories of Coincidental Times (2017), at x-ist and participated in the group exhibition titled Variations on An Andalusian Dog (x-ist, 2015), as well as Blank Wall (Athens, 2018) and Contemporary Istanbul (Istanbul, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018).

Ali Bilge Akkaya “1G1”, diasec, 45X61,5 cm, 2014

RENA EFFENDI

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Rena Effendi is an Istanbul-based documentary photographer, whose early work focused on the oil industry’s effects on people’s lives. As a result, she followed a 1,700 km oil pipeline through Georgia and Turkey, collecting stories along the way. This six–year endeavour was published by Schilt Publishing in 2009, in her first monograph, Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives along the Pipeline. In 2013, Schilt Publishing released Effendi’s second monograph, Liquid Land, a lyrical visual narrative, where her images are paired with photographs of dead butterflies hunted by her father, a Soviet Azerbaijani entomologist, who collected more than 30,000 of them from across the Soviet Union.

Effendi’s photographs provide insight into lives lived in areas of the world that have fallen off the radar of the international media and become silent. In the words of the Prince Claus Fund Award Committee, two qualities pervade in Rena Effendi’s photography: a deep sense of empathy, and a quiet celebration of the strength of the human spirit. By portraying individual dilemmas in forgotten communities around the world, Rena Effendi puts the spotlight on uncomfortable global issues, such as social marginalisation, post-war trauma and environmental degradation. Her portraits of the displaced and the disempowered convey moments of unspoken anguish, but more so they express dignity in the struggle for survival. Her collection of portraits and places, spanning over almost two decades and documenting intimate, individual experiences is a testimony to human resilience.

Rena Effendi has received many international awards for her photography work, such as the Prince Claus Fund Award for Culture and Development and a SONY World Photography Fine Art award for her still life work. She was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Award in Photography and Sustainability for her series, Chernobyl: Still Lives in the Zones. In 2014, Rena Effendi was presented with two awards in the portrait category at the World Press Photo Contest. Her photographs have been displayed at the Saatchi Gallery in London, the Aperture Gallery in New York, Miami Art Basel, the North Dakota Museum of Modern Art, the Istanbul Biennial and the Venice Biennial. Rena Effendi’s non-fiction short film feature, ‘Spirit Lake’, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of the 2018 Doc Fortnight film festival. Rena Effendi’s prints are in the collections of Istanbul Modern, the Prince Claus Fund, the North Dakota Museum of Modern Art and the Open Society Foundation in New York. Rena Effendi’s work has been published in National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GEO, The Daily Telegraph, Newsweek, TIME, Le Monde, Marie Claire, Vogue, The Sunday Times, New York Magazine and many others.

Coptic wedding photographer poses in his studio in Sohag, Upper Egypt. 2012

EBRU YILDIZ

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Ebru Yildiz was born and raised in Turkey and moved to New York City in 1998. While pursuing her Master’s degree in Communications Design at Pratt Institute, her passion for music led her to seek it out everywhere – large clubs, small bars, back rooms, house parties, and the multitude of DIY venues in Brooklyn. She soon found herself documenting the thriving New York Music scene on an almost nightly basis. In 2017 Ebru was selected as one of Brooklyn Magazine’s “100 Top Brooklyn Influencers”. In 2016 she self-published her first photo book, “We’ve Come So Far – The Last Days of Death By Audio”, a documentation of the final days of the beloved DIY Brooklyn venue, released to positive reviews from The New Yorker, Slate, Pitchfork, and Fader, among many others. In 2015 Ebru received a Turkish Cultural Foundation grant which funded her work on an in-depth photo essay on the current landscape of Turkish music, which was published by Pitchfork and was subsequently selected as PDN’s Photo of The Day. Ebru was invited to show work in the Janette Beckman-curated exhibit “Down & Dirty” at Photoville 2015, along with acclaimed photographers Bob Gruen, Danny Clinch, and Mick Rock, among others. She was selected as one of “The 50 Greatest Music Photographers Right Now” by Complex Magazine in 2012. Her photographs appear regularly in print and online publications including Pitchfork, NPR, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Q Magazine, Spin, NME, New York Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, Interview Magazine, FADER, and Huffington Post, along with Impose Magazine and Brooklyn Vegan, publications that have their finger on the pulse of the NYC DIY scene. Ebru currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Ebru Yildiz understands the artistry of a timeless portrait. The New York-via-Turkey based photographer has illuminated an array of faces including Perfume Genius, Laurie Anderson, Interpol, Sharon Jones, and John Cale. Her simplicity is signature; a tight window fitted plainly around an open soft face, often in crisp black and white or the occasional rich palette of color bathed in melancholy blue tones. The result is a slowed down kind of feeling, even meditative.

That ability to freeze a vulnerable moment in time plays a large part in her documentary work as well. Maybe part of that stems from her early days taking photos at DIY shows around New York in the kind of rooms that are cluttered and abrupt. In her first photo book, “We’ve Come So Far – The Last Days of Death By Audio”, Yildiz documented the closing of the DIY space, isolating those brief raw moments, magnifying their modesty and candor. In both her portraits and her documentary work, Yildiz manages to hone a tension while simultaneously unlocking something angelic and loose in her subjects. It’s nearly palpable.’ Robin Bacior

Mitski , Brooklyn, New York, October 17, 2018

FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY IN TURKEY

ALT – Yapı Kredi bomontiada
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Although the history of domestic fashion photography dates back many years, the fashion magazines launched in Turkey starting in the ’80s played a great role in redefining this distinctive genre of photography and bringing it to its current state. The launch of the domestic publication Vizyon in 1984, followed by the introduction of Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar, could be regarded as the birth of modern fashion photography in Turkey.

‘Fashion Photography in Turkey’ explores recent developments in fashion photography in Turkey, a world-class affair that is ever open to transformation and improvement. The exhibition comprises works by many artists who have experienced the dynamics of the master-apprentice relationship together.

By highlighting the most salient examples of creative photography that reflect a sense of collaboration and productivity, the exhibition seeks to honour the hard-working talents behind the camera lens.

The artists featured in the exhibition are Cüneyt Akeroğlu, Barış Aktınmaz, Cihan Alpgiray, Ayten Alpün, Şenol Altun, Nurhan Artar, Koray Birand, Sedef Delen, Emre Doğru, Serkan Emiroğlu, Mehmet Erzincan, Emre Güven, Hasan Hüseyin, Yağmur Kızılok, Nihat Odabaşı, Serdar Önal, Koray Parlak, Ümit Savacı, Lara Sayılgan, Serkan Şedele, Emre Ünal and Tamer Yılmaz.

This project was brought to life with the consultancy of Tamer Yılmaz and the valuable support of Mavi.

Ümit Savacı

YAPI KREDİ 75TH ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION
SELAHATTIN GIZ ISTANBUL PHOTOS

Yapı Kredi bomontiada, 4th Floor,
May 3-12
Weekdays 10:00 – 20:00,
Weekends 10:00 – 21:00

Born in 1914 in Thessaloniki, Greece, Selahattin Giz took his first photograph with a camera his uncle gave him as a present. He gained more experience with a Zeiss camera he bought during his years at the Galatasaray High School. Together with his classmate Doğan Nadi, Giz began working at Cumhuriyet newspaper with the aim of developing his photographs. Yet after photos he took at a national football game were published in the newspaper, he went on to work there for 43 years. He was awarded the Burhan Felek Service Award, given by the Society of Journalists to those who have contributed to the profession for more than 50 years. Giz was also a co-founder of Basın Ajansı, which launched in 1948. Founded with Faruk Fenik, Müeddep Erkmen and Fanik Senol, the agency sought to dispatch photographs to their destination on time.

Among Giz’s photographs, the Atatürk collection and sports photographs hold a place of their own. Consisting of 4,000 images, the Atatürk collection includes exclusive images from the visits of various statesmen, the Language Congress, the History Congress, meetings in Dolmabahçe, train rides between Ankara and Istanbul as well as balls and galas. The photographs of Atatürk’s mortal remains being transported from Dolmabahçe to the Ethnography Museum of Ankara are a highlight of the collection.

Thanks to meticulous, long-term efforts, the 40,000-plus glass plates and negative images found in the Selahattin Giz Collection of the Yapı Kredi Historical Archive were digitised and sorted into 30 main categories and 300 subcategories. As a cultural service, Yapı Kredi has opened this exceptional collection to researchers.