CI DEMI
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I’m Ci Demi, an Istanbul-based photographer, and you’ve just entered my zone — a place where I tell stories focused on the city’s psychogeography. I also contribute to publications such as Financial Times, Der Spiegel, Zeit, The New York Times, and more.
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Statement
Tearsheets
Exhibitions
Texts STORIES
UNUTURSAN DARILMAM / NO OFFENCE IF YOU FORGET
Upcoming photobook
2018—2024
Within a silent Istanbul apartment, a year of isolation reshaped the city into a distant, restless companion. The photographs became a fragile dialogue between a medicated mind and a metropolis speaking the same uneasy language. In their quiet exchange, the work wonders whether it is the photographer or the city that is slowly being forgotten.
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THIS PECULIAR DAY
Long-term story
2023—ONGOING
Crowds and emptiness collide, giving Istanbul the rhythm of a city caught between breath and pause. Veiled faces and shifting spaces hum with unease; part beauty, part disquiet. In these tensions, the photographs murmur a society caught between surveillance and retreat.
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İSTANBULLU / THE ISTANBULITE
Photo-reportage
2025
A dawn of rupture cast the city into fear as a detained mayor signalled a quiet coup. He hesitated to return to the unrest he once photographed without thinking. But when the barricade broke and fear gave way, the streets surged; and he followed.
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ŞEHİR FİKRİ / NOTION OF A CITY
Photobook
DECEMBER 2022
A city without people or words drifts into view, asking whether we’re seeing Istanbul itself or only its idea. Familiar shapes lure the eye yet offer no way home, turning recognition into a soft riddle. In this stripped-back landscape, the city becomes a memory of itself; untethered and uncanny.
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MANDA FESTİVALİ / WATER BUFFALO FESTIVAL
Campaign for Climavore x Jameel at RCA
2025
In Istanbul’s northern edges, herders and their water buffaloes stand against a landscape shifting beneath them. Villages that once held the city’s rural memory now face airports, mines, and concrete closing in. Through quiet, formal portraits, the series witnesses a fragile bond; an echo of labour, ecology, and culture at risk of disappearing.
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WILL THE WORLD END IN THE DAYTIME
Short-term story
2017—2019
A looming catastrophe hangs over Istanbul, felt in everyday moments like a quiet shiver in the air. The series wanders through the crowded city, searching for signs of a disaster long predicted yet never prepared for. Through a conceptual, fictional lens, it imagines the earthquake and its aftermath as a story already waiting to unfold.
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