Two important collaborations with artists and institutions from neighboring Turkey have resulted in the “birth” of the Iron earth copper sky and the Wet City exhibitions in Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2018, organised by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography.

Iron earth copper sky – Photobooks from Turkey, Photobooks on Turkey

Drawing inspiration from the eponymous novel, the photobook exhibition Iron Earth Copper Sky, curated by Volkan Kiziltunc is showing a selection of photobooks from and on Turkey. The works included comprise contemporary photobooks from Turkey, published or self-published, limited edition photobooks produced during FUAM workshops as well as photobooks on Turkey by photographers from different countries. The works carry political aspects, social backgrounds, historical references or personal approaches towards situations about something or some place in Turkey.

Participating artists: Coskun Asar (TR), Kursat Bayhan (TR), Federico Buzzoni (IT), Haluk Cobanoglu (TR), Mathias Depardon (FR), Bekir Dindar (TR), Cagdas Erdogan (TR), Alp Esin (TR), George Georgiou (UK), Korhan Karaoysal (TR), Volkan Kiziltunc (TR), Paola de Pietri (IT), Ahmet Polat (NL), Yusuf Murat Sen (TR), Yusuf Sevincli (TR), Ozlem Simsek (TR), Selim Sume (TR), Ali Taptik (TR), Altay Tuz (TR), Vanessa Winship (UK), Arjen Zwart (NL)

Bio
Volkan Kiziltunc is a Turkish artist working in-between still and moving image. He has studied archaeology and photography, and is now an academic at the photography department of the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He was the co-founder of a non-profit artist-run space which operated from 2015 to 2017, while recently he has founded the NOKS Independent Art Space which focuses on photography, photobooks and video projects. He is a member of FUAM (Photography Research & Applications Centre) and the coordinator of the Istanbul Photobook Festival. His academic research focuses on conceptual documentary, new objectivity and deadpan photography, while his work focuses on time, reconstruction, transformation, observation, memory, typologies and voyeurism.
His works have been exhibited at the ESSL Contemporary Art Museum, TRAFO Centre for Contemporary Art, Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, MAS Museum, Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, Taipei Biennial, Istanbul Modern, and Sinopal, International Sinop Biennial.

Iron earth copper sky – Photobooks from Turkey, Photobooks on Turkey
Duration: 25/09 – 03/11/2018, Opening: 25/09/2018, 19:30
Venue: National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation Bookstore
Opening hours: Monday, Wednesday 09:00-15:30, Tuesday-Thursday-Friday 09:00-20:00, Saturday 09:30-16:00
Curation: Volkan Kiziltunc
Co-operaition: National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, FUAM, (Istanbul Photobook Festival), Thessaloniki Museum of Photography
Free entrance

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Wet City | Yusuf Murat Sen (TR)

The Turkish artist Yusuf Murat Sen photographs Istanbul as a city in progress, an enormous construction site in building growth, presenting the image of a city in which the past has vanished before a permanent present and future. Black and white images on plates with apparent processing marks (the path of the fluids is visible on many spots), perhaps in an attempt to make them resemble material culture objects – carriers of memory, found during an excavation or in an old archive; such is the final outcome of the majority of his works. At the same time, through the antithesis between image and material (quick construction development/slow photographic procedure), there is projected a gloomy, depressive reality, but also a city that has already started to sink.

Bio
Yusuf Murat Şen was born in Şırnak in 1968. He attended Marmara University (BA), and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (MA, PhD) where, alongside his teaching duties from 1991 onwards, he served as the head of the photography department between 2007-2013. Şen also serves as the director of FUAM (Photography Research and Application Center), of which he is a co-founding member, as well as the director of the Istanbul Photobook Festival.
Şen has been exploring the antique methods of photography, its contemporary connotations and photography archiving for many years. His work, which carries the qualities of documentary photography, mainly focuses on the interwoven cultural and sociological tensions in Turkey, the monopolised political system, and urbanization, and has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Turkey and abroad (Austria, Sweden, Greece and Bosnia-Herzegovina).
He currently lives and works in Istanbul, organizing photobook workshops, exhibitions, seminars, artist talks and consulting projects, as well as participating in judging panels.

Wet city
Duration: 27/09 – 25/10/2018, Opening: 27/09/2018, 19:00
Venue: Kalos & Klio showroom
Opening hours: Tuesday-Friday 11:00-14:00 & 17:00- 20:00, Saturday 11:00-14:00
Curation: Theodore Markoglou
Free entrance