PROFILE




CI DEMI
ci@cidemi.art
Instagram

Hello! I’m Ci, an Istanbul-based photographer exploring the psychogeography of the city through my personal work. My second photobook is currently in the crowdfunding phase at FiLBooks. You can license a curated selection of my pictures via Connected Archives.

Please email me for assignments or limited edition print inquiries.

  1. STORIES (INDEX)
  2. EXHIBITIONS
  3. TEARSHEETS
  4. TEXTS
  5. STORE

UPDATES

  • 30 May 2025: Shortlisted for Verzasca Foto Festival Awards 2025.
  • 24 March 2025: Shortlisted for the Images Vevey Book Award 2025/2026.
  • 24 January 2025: Featured in Dear Dave, Magazine Fellowship 2024.
  • 11 December 2024: Nominated for the Prix Pictet 2025.



INFORMATION




BIOGRAPHY
Ci Demi (he/him — b. 1986, Istanbul, Türkiye) is a photographer based in Istanbul. He studied Italian Language and Literature at Istanbul University. At 28, he discovered photography.

His photographs have been featured in prominent publications like Foam Magazine and the British Journal of Photography. Demi's work has been showcased at renowned festivals and venues, including Les Rencontres d'Arles and Istanbul's Pera Museum. 

In 2022, his series "Unutursan Darılmam" (No Offence If You Forget, 2018 - 2024) was selected as the winner of Discovery Awards at Encontros da Imagem photography festival.

Onagöre published Demi's debut photobook, "Şehir Fikri" (Notion of a City, December 2022), an eerie portrayal of Istanbul marked by the absence of people, animals, and language. Inspired by Georges Perec's oulipo novel "La Disparition" (A Void, 1969), the book focuses on the city's haunting essence.

His personal work explores the psychogeography of Istanbul, intricately weaving together intimate narratives of the city's landscape with his own lived experiences. While he adopts a documentarian approach to his images (ensuring they are always unaltered and unstaged), his use of colour to convey a “quiet tension” is prominent in his work.

He’s a member of Connected Archives and an affilite of PLATFORM by GAPO.


CVBooks

2025 Unutursan Darılmam (No Offence If You Forget, FiLBooks, To be published)
2022 Şehir Fikri (Notion of a City, Onagöre)

Awards

2022 Winner, Discovery Awards, Encontros da Imagem

Nominations

2024 Prix Pictet 2025
2024 C/O Berlin Talent Award 2025
2024 Joop Swart Masterclass
2022 Leica Oskar Barnack Award

Shortlists

2025 Verzasca Foto Festival Awards
2025 Images Vevey Book Award 2025/2026
2024 Dear Dave, Fellowship
2023 Foam Talent Call 2024-25
2023 Belfast Photo Festival
2021 212 Photography Istanbul

Grants

2018 SAHA, Travel grant for Les Rencontres d’Arles

Teaching

2023 Istanbul in My Lens: Photographing the City, Workshop and portfolio review, Pera Museum


CLIENTSPublications

Geo (Licensing)
Harvard Business Manager (Licensing)
Zeit Online (Editorial)
Aposto (Editorial)
Harper’s Bazaar Italia (Licensing)
11Freunde (Editorial)
Der Spiegel (Editorial)
Society (Editorial)
Financial Times (Editorial)
The New York Times (Editorial)
Zeit Magazin (Editorial)
Die Zeit (Editorial)
Kaos GL (Licensing)
Altyazı (Editorial)
Frankie Magazine (Editorial)

NGOs

Better Shelter (Editorial)

Music

Oil Giant (Album cover, Licensing)
Zorlu PSM (Editorial)
Simge Pınar (Single cover)
Deniz Tekin (Editorial)
Sofar Sounds (Editorial, 2015 - 2018)

Others

Première Vision (Licensing)
Reflect Studio (Commercial)



PRESS
Highlights

Dear Dave, Magazine (Portfolio, 2025) · Nowness (Video essay, 2024) · DPReview (Interview, 2023) · Foam Magazine (Feature, Print, 2023) · Turkey Book Talk (Podcast, 2023) · Creative Review (Photography Annual, Feature, Print, 2022) · British Journal of Photography (Feature, Print, 2022) · Booooooom (Feature, 2022) · WePresent (Profile, 2022)

Interviews

Lenscratch (Interview, 2024) · Raandoom (Interview, 2024) · Ve Diğer İşler (Podcast, 2024) · The Urbanaut Podcast (Podcast, 2024) · Onagöre Blog (Söyleşi, 2023) · Hyperallergic (Interview, 2023) · ArtDog Istanbul (Söyleşi, Print, 2023) · Calling #2 (Söyleşi, 2022) · Maviblau (Interview, 2022) · Yerden Yüksek (Açık Radyo, Söyleşi, 2022) · Calling (Söyleşi, 2022) · Bant Mag (Söyleşi, 2022) · 212 Studio (Instagram interview, 2022) · ERRR Magazine (Interview, 2022) · Anywhere Blvd (Interview, 2022) · Urbanautica (Interview, 2022) · allcitiesarebeautiful (Interview, 2022) · Fotoğraf Konuşmaları (Podcast, 2021) · Kaleydoskop (Interview, 2021) · Trendland (Interview, 2021) · VSCO (Interview, 2019)

Others

Rast Magazine (Hikaye, 2024) · this isn’t happiness #2 (Feature, 2024) · Perimetro (Feature, 2024) · photo-letter (Feature, 2024) · Adventure.com (Article, 2023) · Cargo (Feature, 2023) · revue EPIC (Feature, Print, 2023) · Safelight Paper (Feature, 2023) · Pera Museum Blog (Story, 2023) · Switch Magazine (Feature, Print, 2023) · Decalogue Magazine (Feature, 2022) · Der Greif (Feature, 2022) · Art Unlimited (Editorial, 2022) · Fisheye Magazine (Feature, 2022) · Bir Kare Bir Anlam (TRT 2, Documentary, Episode 13 & 17, 2022) · Broad Magazine (Feature, 2021) · Ain’t Bad (Feature, 2021) · C41 Magazine (Feature, 2021) · Subjectively Objective (Feature, 2021) · this isn’t happiness (Feature, 2021) · Istanbul Art News (Feature, Print, 2019) · Fabrika Zine (Feature, Print, 2018) · L'Œil de la Photographie (Feature, 2017) · GUP Magazine (Feature, 2017)

Mentions

Dear Dave, Magazine (Instagram feature, 2024) · Polka Magazine (Instagram feature, 2024) · Milk (Instagram feature, 2024) · Yogurt Magazine (Instagram feature, 2022) · The Museum of Modern Art (Instagram feature, 2022) · Nowness Asia (Instagram feature, 2021) · Noice Magazine (Instagram feature, 2021) · AnOther Magazine (Instagram feature, 2021)






Updated: 31 May 2025 09:50
STORIES






THIS PECULIAR DAY
 TR: Bu Tuhaf Gün
Long-term story
2023 - Ongoing

In This Peculiar Day, Ci Demi moves through Istanbul with a sense of quiet tension, capturing its strange beauty and emotional dissonance. Influenced by the tones and atmosphere of 1970s giallo films, he presents the city as both familiar and unsettling; full of colour, yet shadowed by unease.

He pairs tightly packed crowds with near-empty streets, letting moments of stillness and noise echo off one another. Through veiled facades, construction zones, and isolated figures, Demi reveals a city caught between transformation and stasis. Istanbul becomes less a place than a mood; restless, uncanny, and deeply human.

  • Exhibitions: Complex at AOS51 (May 2025)
  • Playlist: In progress







İSTANBULLU
 EN: The Istanbulite
Photoreportage
21 March - 9 April 2025








UNUTURSAN DARILMAM EN: No Offence If You Forget
Photobook, FiLBooks
2018 - 2024

Everything in this story unfolds within an apartment in Istanbul.

Backstory: In 2019, the author experienced a severe depressive episode, confining him to his home for an entire year. His only outings were for psychiatrist visits and brief trips to the city centre. As months of isolation passed, the city became a distant memory, morphing into a monstrous, ever-changing entity. The photographer clung to the few photographs he could take, dedicating every waking moment to studying, editing, sorting, and writing about them. The episode would last until 2022.

Society often views mental health as a personal struggle, with alienation as a common consequence. This work, however, externalises the author's battles, reflecting the impact of a newly diagnosed bipolar disorder on various facets of Istanbul.

The photographs capture both everyday life in Istanbul and the emotions these moments evoke in the photographer, offering a glimpse into a heavily medicated mind. The scenes depicted are serene, occasionally chilling, often restless, yet oddly loving.

Navigating a city of 16 million while grappling with a mental disorder: Through photographs, we come to understand that the vocabulary of existing in a crowded metropolis and the inner turmoil of a somber individual share many similarities. One might even say they speak the same language. Photography becomes their silent dialogue and poignant acknowledgment of a single, certain truth: Perhaps it was time to leave.A central question emerges: Who is being forgotten—the photographer or the city? Through photography, this body of work creates a shared memory for both the author and the city—a collection of images to revisit once the struggle subsides.

The project spanned several years, becoming the author's lifeline for engaging with life and documenting the city's ongoing transformations. Although the city's evolution remained relentless, the story yearned for closure. Hadn't the photographer already satisfied his curiosity or compensated for lost time?

As it turns out, the answer lay in a journey to New Zealand in 2023, for the purpose of settling in the country. There, a lonely scene of a tree in a cemetery triggered a flashback to the photograph of the author's grandmother's funeral. One thought bubble later, a conclusion emerged: death looked the same everywhere, even "at the end of the world." 

The photographer decided not to leave Istanbul behind, but to live there as long as it was allowed.

  • Publisher: FiLBooks (To be published in late 2025, Pre-sale)
  • Press release: Türkçe, English
  • Awards: The winner of Discovery Awards at Encontros da Imagem (2022)
  • Exhibitions: Borderless Art Book Days (2025), Italo Calvino Is 100+1 Years Old! at Kıraathane (2024), Mamut Art Project (2022), Encontros da Imagem (2022)
  • As seen on: Lenscratch, Perimetro (Italian), Creative Review, Adventure.com, Bant Mag (Turkish)
  • Playlist: In progress







ŞEHİR FİKRİ EN: Notion of a City
Photobook, Onagöre
December 2022

Something is missing. What happens if you leave out people, animals, and language while telling a story about a city? Notion of a City is a beautifully peculiar portrayal of Istanbul.

We have imagined a city, built it. Is this it though, or just an idea of it? We walked these streets, learned our way back home; it was easy to get lost but we knew that wall with the graffiti on it, we turned left and then right (many times), and it was there.

Stripped of all the clues that tell someone where a place might be, the book portrays a city with no one and no language in it. There are, however, some signs of life: foliage and, of course, construction sites. Some other questions you will ask yourself: Where is this? What city is this? Is this even a city?

An attentive eye roams an untamed space; familiar scenes and objects with no context, they all come together to trick you, make you forget the way back home. It’s Istanbul, as a notion of a city that lives in our minds. That’s about it.


You can purchase the book from Onagöre (Turkey), Printed Matter, and The Library Project.







WILL THE WORLD END IN THE DAYTIME TR: Kıyamet Gündüz Mü Gelecek
Long-term story
2017 - 2019

We sense an approaching catastrophe — ecological problems, terrorist attacks, and more dreadful, unidentifiable dangers whose source we don’t know.

This expectancy, almost fate, is real in the case of Istanbul. ‘Will the World End in the Daytime’ is a series about an earthquake predicted by scientists right after the 1999 Marmara earthquakes.

The series searches for eerie signs and scenes in everyday moments in the overpopulated city that could face destruction at any second, for which government bodies have never properly prepared it.

Using a conceptual and fictional approach, the work tells the story of the earthquake and its aftermath.

  • Exhibitions: Les Rencontres d’Arles as part of A Pillar of Smoke (2018), Jimei x Arles International Photography Festival (2018)
  • As seen on: Hyperallergic






FABRIC TR: Kumaş
Short-term story
2017






HOW LONG IS YOUR STAY TR: Ne Kadar Kalacaktınız
Short-term story
2017