Istanbuls Today

Istanbuls Today was a photography exhibition that offered a comprehensive look into contemporary visual narratives from various Istanbuls—shaped and experienced concurrently—with the hope of creating a layered and innovative view of the city’s present. 

The exhibition, which included thematic urban landscapes, provided a viewing space for the latest, previously unexhibited works of 11 photographers who lived in Istanbul with varying relationships to the city and who created art in their own unique styles.  

These themes ranged from the city's topography of emptiness, loneliness, eeriness, and incongruousness to its socio-political activities, from the migration issue that became more evident over the last decade to young individuals who took refuge in Istanbul to live without being labeled as "the other"; from the Istanbul Canal project—one of Türkiye’s mega projects whose numbers increased exponentially in recent years—to the practice of interpreting the city as a personal interaction space; and to works dealing with the ordinarily extraordinary oddities of the city. 

Curated by Refik Akyüz and Serdar Darendeliler, Istanbuls Today attempted a critical and creative visual interpretation of the period we lived in while also creating a space of discovery for photographers who crossed paths with the current state of Istanbul—a city that has been photographed with passion, curiosity, and excitement throughout history. Thus, the exhibition captured the diversity of photographers today. 

Istanbuls Today was enriched with articles penned for the catalogue by seven different academics, researchers, and writers who worked on, researched, thought about, or created fiction around the subjects covered in the exhibition, inspired by the featured artists' works.