Film Student Çağla Demirbaş Exhibits at Prestigious Istanbul Festival

Film student Çağla Demirbaş, an award-winning filmmaker, flexed her chops behind the camera at 212 Photography Istanbul, which sprawled across the city this autumn from September 27 to October 12. The international photography festival brought together celebrated figures like Steve McCurry and Harry Gruyaert with local, emerging artists in exhibitions, workshops, panels, screenings, and performances across galleries and historic venues in Türkiye's largest metropolis.

Demirbaş's photographs were exhibited in a duo show titled Where Light Fractures, which included works from her series Media Omitted (archival pigment print, 2022) and I Know You're Capable of Beautiful Intimacies (archival pigment print, 2022). Media Omitted was awarded second 'Best Series' at the 2023 American Photographic Artists Awards, and was nominated for Best Landscape at 2022 Head On Photo Awards.

In Where Light Fractures, curator Melis Bektaş paired Demirbaş's photographs with work by ES Kibele Yarman, whose whimsical collages were in technical and conceptual conversation with Demirbaş's analogue photographs. For Demirbaş, layering techniques and double exposures mirror the multitudinous possibilities that exist in a fragment of a moment—the "what-ifs" of relationships. Awash in pink, the double exposed images from Media Omitted create uncanny landscapes, reminiscent of a familiar location reproduced in a dream. An admirer of both Bektaş's and Yarman's work, Demirbaş expressed that the coupling added "another layer" to the show, which she described as "an encounter as profound as it is silent."

The images from I Know You're Capable of Beautiful Intimacies (archival pigment print, 2022), provided a productive counterpoint to the blurred logic of Media Omitted. The photographs applied a crisp, vivid vision to small, strange moments isolated from context: hands cupping shards of glass, or a delicate feather atop a slick surface. Inverting the strategies of Media Omitted, I Know You're Capable of Beautiful Intimacies worked toward the same goal: exploring how light refracts through memory.

"Çağla Demirbaş condenses the intent behind her work into two words: 'Look closer,'" sums up Selen Başman for Daily Sabah. "Her photographs reflect the search for the 'decisive moment,' capturing fragments of life where presence, timing and perception converge."

While Demirbaş was unable to attend this year's festival, which coincided with her move to New York for the Film Program, she expressed her excitement at being included in a festival she loyally attended in past years, back when she sold her artworks in the bookstore instead of the gallery:    

"Being exhibited as a part of the official line up was definitely the crown jewel, especially since this year included photographers like Steve McCurry and Harry Gruyaert. Seeing my name next to theirs so early in my career, as an artist who uses multiple mediums, was a huge motivation."

Çağla Demirbaş, born in Türkiye's capital, Ankara, received her BA from Istanbul Bilgi University’s Media and Communication (2020) and Film and Television (2022) departments as a salutatorian and a valedictorian, respectively. Her photo series Media Omitted (2022) was exhibited internationally including at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Mall Galleries, Der Greif, the Month of Photography Denver, and Mixer Arts. The series was adapted into a photobook in 2024 by FiLBooks publishing house. In the same year, the Museum of Avant-garde, Switzerland (MA-g) included Media Omitted in their permanent collection. 

Demirbaş's photography has been featured in the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, TRT World, and Contemporary Istanbul. Her first short screenplay, Room Service, was a finalist at the BAFTA-qualifying Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival, and a quarter-finalist at Kerry International Film Festival. In 2024, she won a grant from the Ahbap Association and Coca-Cola Türkiye to produce the film.