Businessperson Bülent Eczacıbaşı has launched a pioneering initiative to carry photography culture and Türkiye’s visual memory into the future. Established on October 1, 2023, under the Bülent Eczacıbaşı Foundation, the Center for Photographic Studies (BEVFAM) opened as one of Türkiye’s significant centers for the preservation, digitization, and sharing of photography archives with researchers.

The primary goal of BEVFAM, which is to “collect, preserve, and digitize various at-risk photography archives and collections in Türkiye and present them to the service of researchers and the public,” focuses on a wide range of production areas, from documentary and press photographers to artists, from special occasion studios to amateur archives, and from commercial photographers to those commissioned by state institutions.

Operating within the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, yet maintaining an autonomous structure in terms of management and operation, BEVFAM has incorporated the archives of Mehmet Bayhan, Tuğrul Çakar, Nusret Elgin, Nusret Nurdan Eren, Sinan Koçaslan, Robert John Marshall, Mert Rüstem, Gülnur Sözmen, and Sinan Turan as of November 2025. Furthermore, within the framework of prepared protocols, a selection from the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Photography Collection and the İKSV Istanbul Biennial archive will be opened to the public via the Center’s website, which is linked to its own database. These collaborations represent an important step in increasing the accessibility of photography and cultural documents in Türkiye.

In the long term, BEVFAM aims to go beyond being a static archive interface to include publications, workshops, interactive exhibitions, and joint efforts with other archive projects.

Speaking at the opening meeting of BEVFAM, Bülent Eczacıbaşı emphasized that the Center’s duty is not only to protect archives but also to transform these materials into a living source of information by opening them to the access of researchers, academics, and the public. He stated, “We place great importance on these archives serving as a source of inspiration for new research and productions for a wide range of users, from historians to social scientists, and from artists to students. Engaging the younger generations with this visual heritage, allowing them to question and reinterpret it, is also among the primary duties of the center.”

With photographer, writer, and lecturer Orhan Cem Çetin serving as Project Consultant and Istanbul Museum of Modern Art curator and Head of Photography Department Demet Yıldız Dinçer as Coordinator, BEVFAM’s Advisory Board includes Dr. Özge B. Calafato, Faculty Member at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Cultural Analysis; Architect and Architectural Photographer Cemal Emden; Bülent Erkmen, founding director of BEK Design and Consultancy; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Ersoy, Faculty Member at Boğaziçi University’s Department of History; and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gamze Toksoy, Faculty Member at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University’s Department of Sociology.

The BEVFAM Archive can be accessed online at http://www.bevfam.org