Nusret Nurdan Eren

Born in 1931 in Kısıklı, Istanbul, architect Nusret Nurdan Eren graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University in 1959. After working in the field of architecture until the 1980s, he turned his longstanding interest in photography into a professional pursuit.

Eren first encountered photography in 1946–1947, during his boarding school years at Denizli High School, where he worked as a darkroom assistant for a local photographer. In 1949, while a student at Haydarpaşa High School, he photographed his classmates and printed the images himself, gaining early, hands-on experience with professional production processes. After a break from photography, he returned to the medium in the late 1960s by joining the photo excursions of Reha Günay, an architectural photographer he met at the Faculty of Architecture, and Sabit Kalfagil, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship. From the 1980s onwards, he devoted himself entirely to photography.

Eren’s compositions are defined by simplicity, creative use of light, and formal restraint. Wild mushrooms, forests, rock formations, seasonal changes, and migratory birds are among his central subjects, elements through which he interprets nature with a focus on rhythm and balance. His photographic practice reflects a striking simplicity that merges his architectural training with close observation of the natural world. Eren mastered the use of color, and produced very few black-and-white photographs.

He is widely known for the documentary Anıtkabir (1980), which he co-produced with Tansu Gürpınar. For this work, Eren used a fisheye lens for the first time and designed a double-projection screening synchronized with a special sound recording and dissolving transitions. The innovative presentation premiered in 1981 at the large hall of the Atatürk Cultural Center, and was later shown at the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, at Photokina International Photo and Video Fair (Cologne, Germany), and in New York.

His book Arkadaşım Bozardıç was published in 2017. At the end of 2023, a retrospective selection of his work was released as the 14th volume of the Eczacıbaşı Photographers Series. The artist passed away in October 2023 during the book’s production process.