Witnessbeforeimage.
Ali Alışır approaches the street as a living archive: a place where bodies, architecture and manufactured images briefly collide and leave evidence.
The archive is an edited memory.
I photograph the city not to describe it, but to meet the evidence it leaves behind. A gesture held for a second, a face divided by glass, a body caught between an advertisement and its reflection: these collisions are where reality becomes visible.
Black and white is not nostalgia. It is a way of withdrawing colour so that light, skin, stone, fabric and distance can speak more clearly. İstanbul, Manchester and Liverpool are living structures with distinct tempos.
The archive is not a storehouse of everything photographed. It is an edited memory. Each image is selected for what it adds to the rhythm of the whole—and for the question it keeps open.
İstanbul / layered reality
Histories and images accumulate in the same visual field.
ENTER SERIES →02Manchester / public surfaces
Brick, glass, murals and industrial memory form a changing stage.
ENTER SERIES →03Liverpool / music and passage
Waterfront scale, music mythology and passing bodies meet.
ENTER SERIES →From the photographic image to constructed realities.
Born in İstanbul in 1978, Ali Alışır began studying graphic design in 1996 on a merit scholarship at Yeditepe University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. He completed a master’s degree in photography at Accademia Italiana in Florence.
His series Virtual Bodies, Virtual Places, Virtual Wars and Virtual Landscapes examined image saturation, alienation, vulnerability and artificial realities. Cosmos and Hybrid Souls continued this inquiry through inner conflict, balance, time and the body.
Alışır’s practice brings photography and digital intervention into dialogue with philosophy, sociology, literature and cinema. His works move between real and virtual, physical and psychological, human and artificial.
TFSF 2025 Award
Ali Alışır received the TFSF 2025 Award from the Photographic Arts Federation of Türkiye for his contribution to digital aesthetics and contemporary photography. Announced in January 2026, the award recognises the distinctive visual language of his Virtual series, Cosmos and Hybrid Souls.
Selected history, 2005–2026
Solo exhibitions 13
- New Collection — Galerie LeRoyer, Toronto
- In Motion — Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg
- Âmes Hybrides — Galerie LeRoyer, Montréal
- Ali Alışır 2009–2019, book launch — Bozlu Art Project, İstanbul
- Hybrid Souls — Bozlu Art Project, İstanbul
- Cosmos — Bozlu Art Project, İstanbul
- Virtual Trilogy — İstanbul Technical University, İstanbul
- Virtual Landscapes — Bozlu Art Project, İstanbul
- Virtual Wars — Art On İstanbul, İstanbul
- Virtual Places — Art On İstanbul, İstanbul
- Virtual Bodies — Ekavart, İstanbul
- Untitled — Galeri 5, İstanbul
- Untitled — Adaevi, İstanbul
Selected group exhibitions 74
- Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary — Bozlu Art Project, Miami
- CI Bloom — Bozlu Art Project, İstanbul
- Contemporary İstanbul — Bozlu Art Project
- CI Bloom — Bozlu Art Project
- Group Exhibition — Galerie LeRoyer, Montréal
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Outlier Works
- CI Bloom
- Gala Modern — İstanbul Modern
- Uzak / Yakın — İzmir Museum
- Contemporary İstanbul
- GLR Papier — Galerie LeRoyer, Montréal
- Metamorphose — Galerie LeRoyer, Toronto
- Art Miami
- Group Show II — Isabella Garrucho Fine Art, Greenwich
- Group Show — Isabella Garrucho Fine Art, Greenwich
- Contemporary İstanbul
- CI Bloom
- Group Exhibition — Galerie LeRoyer
- Sneak Peek — Mirus Gallery, Los Angeles
- Group Exhibition — Galerie LeRoyer, Toronto
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Anamorphic Portraiture — Mirus Gallery, San Francisco
- Monochrome — Galerie LeRoyer, Montréal
- Contemporary İstanbul
- I Am Still Alive!
- Context Art Miami
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Context Art Miami
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Mad World
- Points of View — İstanbul Modern
- Meta
- Imaginative Time
- Fotoİstanbul
- Identity / Sheltered Place
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Social Mania
- Encounter
- 25
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Contemporary İstanbul VIP Opening
- Fear
- A Case from Afar — Amsterdam
- Bosphorus Summit 6
- Artists in Their Time — İstanbul Modern
- Summer Show
- Katara — Qatar
- Take It or Leave It
- Urban Justice — CerModern, Ankara
- Landskrona Photo Festival
- Impossible Structures
- 5th Gala Modern — İstanbul Modern
- Virtual Places — Opera Gallery, Dubai
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Crossroads
- Contemporary Young Artists
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Traces of Humanity
- Art Beat
- If Nature Is Heaven, City Is Hell — CerModern, Ankara
- Photographs in Our Age — İstanbul Photography Museum
- Contemporary İstanbul — Akbank
- ArtShow
- Contemporary İstanbul
- Artist İstanbul
- Unstrained Reality — Florence
- Untitled — Galleria Il Bracolo, Rome
- Photo Digital Art Fair — Rome
- Toscana Foto Festival
- Digifestival — Milan
- Salerno Invita
- Touch / Neozone / Cloudnine — Florence
- Communication — Dlight Studio, Milan
Talks & panels 36
- Bozlu Art Project
- Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg
- Bozlu Art Project
- İstanbul Modern
- İFOD
- İstanbul Modern
- Kocaeli Community
- Fotogen
- Koç University Hospital
- Bodfad
- 42 Maslak / BANG
- Bursa City Council
- İstanbul Kültür University
- Bozlu Art Project
- İstanbul Technical University
- Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University
- İstanbul Modern
- Wyndham
- İstanbul University
- Uludağ University
- Bozlu Art Project
- Bodfad
- Kare
- Fototrek
- Atölye 9
- Antrepo
- İzmir University
- BUFSAD
- MOF
- CDD
- İFH
- Bahçeşehir University
- 2nd International Photography Days — İzmir
- TFSD
- Yapı Kredi
- Art & Design Week
Collections, education & representation +
Works are held by İstanbul Modern, Erarta Museum, OMM — Odunpazarı Modern Museum, the Presidential Residence of Türkiye, 94 Turkish embassies, and private and corporate collections across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.
Education: Yeditepe University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Graphic Design; MA Photography, Accademia Italiana, Florence. Lecturer at Yeditepe University Faculty of Fine Arts, 2007–2015.