Skip to content
1981
Volume 16, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 2040-3682
  • E-ISSN: 2040-3690

Abstract

Feminist photography in Turkey operates at the intersection of artistic expression and political resistance, navigating a landscape shaped by patriarchal norms, authoritarian governance and a rigid educational infrastructure. This article explores how such visual practices challenge the dominant photographic education system in Turkey – one rooted in technocratic modernism that privileges technical mastery over critical, embodied and inclusive approaches to image-making. The work of emerging photographer Cansu Yıldıran, whose practice is shaped by feminist and queer sensibilities, enables an analysis of alternative photographic aesthetics and methods which suggest modes of resistance. In voicing personal and collective forms of marginalization in this context, Yıldıran’s photographs implicitly critique its conventions of photography education. This, I argue, offers a counter-model that emphasizes performativity, vulnerability and lived experience and opens a critical space that invites more inclusive pedagogical possibilities.

© 2025 Intellect Ltd
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/pop_00118_1
2026-02-12
2026-04-14

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ak, S. A. (2001), Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türk Fotoğrafı, İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Ak, S. A. (2004), Fotoğrafın İzinde Kırk Yıl, İstanbul: Fotoğrafevi Yayınları.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Akyüz, R. (2022), ‘Women of Karadeniz are strong: A closer look at the work of Cansu Yıldıran’, Foam, 20 January, https://www.foam.org/articles/a-closer-look-cansu-yildiran. Accessed 5 January 2025.
  4. Bayhan, M. (1996), Yazılarla Fotoğraf: 1978–1990, İstanbul: Ege Yayınları.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Baykan Calafato, Ö. (2022), Making the Modern Turkish Citizen: Vernacular Photography in the Early Republican Era, London: I.B. Tauris.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Butler, J. (1990), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Butler, J. (1997), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Dastarlı, E. and Cin, F. M. (2023), Feminist Art in Resistance: Aesthetics, Methods and Politics of Art in Turkey, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Diner, C. and Toktaş, Ş. (2010), ‘Waves of feminism in Turkey: Kemalist, Islamist and Kurdish women’s movements in an era of globalization’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 12:1, pp. 41–57, https://doi.org/10.1080/19448950903507388.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Dewdney, A. and Lister, M. (eds) (2009), Photographies, Special Issue: ‘Photography and Education’, 2:2, pp. 103–270.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. El-Hage, B. (2007), ‘The Armenian pioneers of Middle Eastern photography’, Jerusalem Quarterly, 31, pp. 22–26.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Ertan, G. (2005), Türk Fotoğrafında 1960 Sonrası: Cumhuriyetin Kuruluşundan 1960’lı Yıllara Kadar Geçen Süreçte Fotoğrafın Gelişimine Genel Bir Bakış, İstanbul: Bileşim Yayıncılık.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Ertem, F. (2011), ‘Facing the “Other”: A critical approach to the construction of identity narratives in the early photographic practice of the Ottoman Empire’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 9:4, pp. 293–307, https://doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2011.621317.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Fırat, B. Ö. and Yüksel, A. (2024), ‘Mülksüzleştirilenler yeni bir yolunu bulacaktır yerleşmenin’ (‘The dispossessed will find a new way to settle’), Argonotlar, 18 July, https://argonotlar.com/mulksuzlestirilenler-yeni-bir-yolunu-bulacaktir-yerlesmenin. Accessed 22 December 2025.
  15. Genç, K. (2024), ‘A photographer captures the experience of dispossession in Turkey’, Aperture, https://aperture.org/editorial/a-photographer-captures-the-experience-of-dispossession-in-turkey/. Accessed 2 January 2025.
  16. Gezgin, A. Ö. (1995), ‘Cumhuriyetten Günümüze Fotoğrafi’, Fotografya, 4, https://www.fotografya.gen.tr/TR,765/cumhuriyetten-gunumuze-fotografi.html. Accessed 18 December 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Haslanger, S. (1995), ‘Ontology and social construction’, Philosophical Topics, 23:2, pp. 95–125, https://doi.org/10.5840/philtopics19952324.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Hudgins, N. (2020), The Gender of Photography: How Masculine and Feminine Values Shaped the History of Nineteenth-Century Photography, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Iskin, R. E. (2017), Re-Envisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World, London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Kalfagil, S. (1995), ‘Fotoğraf Eğitimi’, Fotografya, 4, https://www.fotografya.gen.tr/TR,763/fotograf-egitimi.html. Accessed 18 December 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Kanburoğlu, Ö. (n.d.), ‘Türkiye’de Fotoğraf Eğitiminin Dünü Bugünü’, Fotografya, 4, http://www.fotografya.gen.tr/TR,759/turkiye-de-fotograf-egitiminin-dunu-bugunu.html. Accessed 27 December 2024.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Karpat, K. H. (1963), ‘The people’s houses in Turkey: Establishment and growth’, Middle East Journal, 17:1–2, pp. 55–67.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Kennedy, K. (1999), ‘Hipparchia the Cynic: Feminist rhetoric and the ethics of embodiment’, Hypatia, 14:2, pp. 48–71, https://doi.org/10.1353/hyp.2005.0048.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Low, D. (2022), Picturing the Ottoman Armenian World: Photography in Erzerum, Harput, Van and Beyond, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. MacKinnon, C. A. (1989), Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Marmara University (n.d.a), ‘Tarihçesi’, Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi, https://gsf.marmara.edu.tr/fakulte/tarihce. Accessed 23 June 2025.
  27. Marmara University (n.d.b), ‘Genel Bilgiler: Fotoğraf Bölümü’, Marmara Üniversitesi: Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi, https://fot-gsf.marmara.edu.tr/genel-bilgiler. Accessed 23 June 2025.
  28. Marmara University (n.d.c), ‘Academic staff’, Faculty of Fine Arts, https://gsf.marmara.edu.tr/en/academic/academic-staff. Accessed 16 January 2025.
  29. Newbury, D. (1997), ‘Talking about practice: Photography students, photographic practice and professional identities’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18:3, pp. 421–34, http://doi.org/10.1080/0142569970180307.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Özpınar, C. (2024), Art, Feminism, and Community: Feminist Art Histories from Turkey, 1973–1998, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Pinney, C. and Peterson, N. (eds) (2003), Photography’s Other Histories, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Rubinstein, D. (2009), ‘Towards photographic education’, Photographies, 2:2, pp. 135–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/17540760903116598.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Şahin Tekinalp, P. (2010), ‘Links between painting and photography in nineteenth-century Turkey’, History of Photography, 34:3, pp. 291–99, https://doi.org/10.1080/03087291003630154.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Seymour, T. (2019), ‘Give me shelter’, British Journal of Photography, 7883, https://www.1854.photography/2019/07/give-me-shelter. Accessed 18 December 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. Seymour, T. (2021), ‘Cansu Yıldıran reveals the painful reality behind their latest series’, British Journal of Photography, https://www.1854.photography/2021/04/cansu-yildiran-fathom/. Accessed 18 December 2025.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Shaw, W. M. K. (2009), ‘Ottoman photography of the late nineteenth century: An “innocent” modernism?’, History of Photography, 33:1, pp. 80–93, https://doi.org/10.1080/03087290802582996.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sirman, N. (1989), ‘Feminism in Turkey: A short history’, New Perspectives on Turkey, 3:1, pp. 1–34, https://doi.org/10.15184/s0896634600000704.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Smith, L. (1992), ‘The politics of focus: Feminism and photography theory’, in I. Armstrong (ed.), New Feminist Discourses, London: Routledge, pp. 238–62.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Tör, V. N. (1940), ‘Fotoğrafa Dair Bir Fetva ve Bir Kaç Düşünce’, in Ankara Halkevi II: Fotoğraf Müsabakası Şartları ve Geçen Yılki Fotoğraf Sergisi, Ankara: Ankara Halkevi, pp. 3–4.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Traub, C. H., Heller, S. and Bell, A. B. (eds) (2006), The Education of a Photographer, New York: Allworth Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Waley, M. I. (1991), ‘Images of the Ottoman Empire: The photograph albums presented by Sultan Abdülhamid II’, The British Library Journal, 17:2, pp. 111–27.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Watney, S. (1984), ‘Photography: Education: Theory’, Screen, 25:1, pp. 67–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/25.1.67.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Wolfe, T. (1981), From Bauhaus to Our House, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Yıldıran, C. (2016–present), ‘Dispossessed’, https://cansuyildiran.com/the-dispossessed. Accessed 16 November 2025.
  45. Yıldıran, C. (2020), ‘Fathom’, https://cansuyildiran.com/fathom. Accessed 16 November 2025.
  46. Yıldıran, C. (2025), in-person interview with O. Yavuz, Turkey, 24 June.
/content/journals/10.1386/pop_00118_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): art education; contemporary Turkish photography; education in postcoloniality; feminist artistic practice; feminist pedagogy; gender and visual culture; queer studies; visual arts curriculum

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test