Panorama: Dreams and Places

Panorama: Dreams and Places is a group exhibition of contemporary photography and lens-based art at Istanbul Modern, in the museum's first-floor galleries, from 19 February to 18 October 2026. Eighteen artists show work made since the 2010s, in forms that range from installation and moving image to archival material and applications of artificial intelligence.

The exhibition is curated by Çelenk Bafra, the museum's Artistic Director, and Demet Yıldız Dinçer, its Photography Curator, with Selen Erkal and Şevval Yürüten of the curatorial department. The museum describes it as its first group exhibition devoted to photography in the new building. Many of the artists made new works or site-specific installations for the occasion, and the display extends across several galleries rather than a single photography space.

The curators treat dreams and places as two planes of thought that stay in contact and change one another, not as opposites. Bafra calls Panorama a shared title for a series of group exhibitions built on research, which the museum hopes will continue. This first edition maps photographic practice in Türkiye, mainly over the last decade. In the foyer, the Dream Library offers photography books and the exhibition catalogues in a reading space above the Bosphorus.

The artists are Larissa Araz, İlgen Arzık, Emre Baykal, Silva Bingaz, Hasan Deniz, Umut Erbaş, Cem Ersavcı, Ece Gökalp and Cemre Yeşil Gönenli. They are joined by Ege Kanar, Zeynep Kayan, Metehan Özcan, Yusuf Sevinçli, İrem Sözen, Selim Süme, Kerem Uzel, Begüm Yamanlar and Cansu Yıldıran. The catalogue appears in Turkish and English, with texts by Bafra, Dinçer, Refik Akyüz, Serdar Darendeliler and Orhan Cem Çetin. The exhibition is supported by ON Digital Banking.