Manuel Çıtak

Manuel Çıtak (1962 to 2023) was an artist who worked in photography in Istanbul. He was born in Malatya, Turkey. He photographed people in the city, on its outskirts and in the countryside. Black-and-white documentary prints were his hallmark. He also made colour cityscapes, portraits and wide panoramas, a format rare at the time.

Çıtak started taking portraits as a university student, on journeys around Turkey. His photo-reportage on the Armenian community first brought him notice in 1990. Madenciler (Miners, 1994) is a documentary work. He photographed the beach at Kilyos from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, and Radikal printed the first pictures in 1996. Kilyos Beach (2000) belongs to the series By the Shore. Mount Nemrut (2002) is a silver gelatine print of 40 x 50 cm. In Kars with Orhan Pamuk, he took photographs later used on foreign covers of the novel Snow (2002). The islomania pictures include colour panoramas of islands and people in nature. Terra shows a nude woman washing among ferns.

He studied graphic design at the Istanbul State Fine Arts Academy, now Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, where he took up photography. He contributed photographs to Cornucopia, Skylife and National Geographic. His only solo exhibition in his lifetime was islomania at Depo, Istanbul (2022). He showed at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest (1999), and the Parc de la Villette, Paris (2004). He took part with the Hafriyat Collective in the 9th Istanbul Biennial (2005). Later came the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (2010), Istanbul Modern (2016) and Depo (2019). His work is in the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Photography Collection. Istanbul Modern holds his first full career survey from 5 November 2026 to 23 May 2027.