Fair Island of a Summer's Sky: Şahin Kaygun, Yıldız Moran

Galerist and Galeri Nev present Fair Island of a Summer's Sky, at the Splendid Palace Hotel on Büyükada, from 18 June to 18 September 2026, bringing together Yıldız Moran and Şahin Kaygun, two artists belonging to different generations and distinct ways of seeing within the history of photography in Turkey.

Taking its title from the phrase found in the writings of Lord Byron, the exhibition brings into dialogue two artists who represent almost entirely different ways of seeing within the history of photography in Turkey. 

In photographs taken on Büyükada in the early 1950s and presented for the first time at the Splendid Palace, Yıldız Moran observes people, everyday life, and the landscape with the attentiveness of a documentarian, yet records them with the sensibility of a poet. In contrast, Şahin Kaygun approached photography as more than a recording medium: he scratched, painted, drew upon photographic surfaces, applied chemical treatments, and meticulously arranged and reconfigured images time and again. Bringing these two practices into dialogue, the exhibition reveals photography's capacity both to bear witness to reality and to disrupt, reshape, and reinvent it. 

Conceived within the century-old memory of the Splendid Palace– a landmark deeply embedded in Büyükada's collective memory – Fair Island of a Summer's Sky invites visitors to encounter Yıldız Moran and Şahin Kaygun through the intertwined lenses of pictoriality and experimentation. Accompanied by the lightness of summer and the sense of timelessness long associated with islands, the exhibition offers a renewed reflection on the many possibilities of the photographic image.