Fotoistanbul photography Festival to start

ISTANBUL

Bringing together more than 50 photographers from Turkey and all around the world, the Fotoistanbul Beşiktaş International Photography Festival will meet photography lovers for the fourth time on Sept. 30.

The art of photography will be celebrated with numerous exhibitions and side events including panels, roundtable discussions, master talks, portfolio reviews and book signings.

The event will last until Oct. 22.

Stripping photography from walls, rules and categories and taking it out to the streets, displaying in a form that allows everyone to construct coincidental relationships with it, bringing together all disciplines and styles and joining the classic and contemporary; the pupil and the master, Fotoistanbul hosted 238 artists from Turkey and all around the world in its first three years.

The festival has presented more than 273 side events, hundreds of portfolio reviews and 160 exhibitions including the works of world-renowned photography artists like William Klein, Josef Koudelka, Anders Petersen, Stanley Greene, Atta Kim, Ara Güler, Nick Brandt, Antoine D’agata, Sandro Miller, Ruud van Empel and Andre Kertesz.

This year’s locations are mainly the squares and streets of Beşiktaş, as well as the Ortaköy Orphanage, many cultural centers and also galleries including Artgalerim, Mixer, Fotoğraf Evi, Istanbul Fotoğraf Galerisi, O’Art, Gama and Fototrek.

This year’s festival will exhibit the works of world famous photographers such as Omar Victor Diop, Michael Kenna, best known for his black and white landscape photography “Dancing Photographer,” Youngho Kang, Alejandro Chaskielberg, Alex Timmermans, Eddo Hartman, Serge Najjar, Gyula Soproyni and many other photographers from all around the world.

Ozan Sağdıç, Ahmet Elhan, Ali Alısır, Çerkes Karadağ and Saygun Dura are among artists from Turkey who will have their works exhibited at the festival. Also a special exhibition and panel will take place in memory of Sabit Kalfagil, one of the most important figures of Turkish photography who passed away this year.

Portfolio reviews given by artists participating in the festival and attracting great interest from both amateur and professional photographers will be held at the Beşiktaş Innovation Center between Oct. 2 and 6 this year.

The festival will also host roundtable discussions with artists renowned within their fields such as Ahmet Ümit, Bedri Baykam, Cemil Ağacıkoğlu and Murat Germen talking about photography’s relation with other forms of art, workshops on special photography techniques and master talks by some of the participating photographers.

There will also be a panel on the “possibilities in the Central European photography scene” with the participation of photographers from Visegrad Group countries - Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - on the occasion of the Hungarian Presidency of V4 Group.
The winner of the Robert Capa International Grand Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in photography, will be exhibited in Fotoistanbul.

Netherlands is guest of honor

Beginning from 2016, Fotoistanbul Beşiktaş International Photography Fotoistanbul features a country and its photographers as the Guest of Honor and organizes events specific to that country.

This year’s guest is Netherlands and will be represented with five photographers: Alex Timmermans, Annabel Oosteweeghel, Marieke Vandervelden, Eddo Hartmann and Peter Edel.

The festival’s art director is the Turkish photographer Attila Durak and the director is Rıza Erdeğirmenci, while the curators are Coşar Kulaksız, Hüseyin Yılmaz, Katharina Mouratidi, Jae Hyun Seok, Christophe Laloi and István Virágvölgyi.

For further information, visit www.fotoistanbul.org