Visiting Artist Lecture: Ebru Yidiz

Gain insight into her unique approach to visual storytelling as she discusses her work, creative process, and the influences behind her powerful imagery.

Artist Bio

Ebru Yildiz understands the artistry of a timeless portrait. The New York-via-Turkey based photographer has illuminated an array of faces including Mitski, Laurie Anderson, Interpol, P!nk, Rhiannon Giddens, Sharon Jones, Neko Case and John Cale. Her simplicity is signature; a tight window fitted plainly around an open soft face, often in crisp black and white or the occasional rich palette of color bathed in melancholy blue tones. The result is a slowed down kind of feeling, even meditative. That ability to freeze a vulnerable moment in time plays a large part in her documentary work as well. Maybe part of that stems from her early days taking photos at DIY shows around New York in the kind of rooms that are cluttered and abrupt. In her first photo book, “We’ve Come So Far – The Last Days of Death By Audio”, Yildiz documented the closing of the DIY space, isolating those brief raw moments, magnifying their modesty and candor. In both her portraits and her documentary work, Yildiz manages to hone a tension while simultaneously unlocking something angelic and loose in her subjects. It’s nearly palpable.
She continues to self-publish a series of zines, each issue focuses on one subject. Her work appeared in publications such as New Yorker, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone etc.