Esra Özdoğan conceives of her photographic production as the translation of certain themes and myths into images. Her photographs are not two-dimensional, flat and material surfaces offering the faithful traces of past reality, but rather the fictional form of a story or a plot that is open to plural readings. She strives to construct her photographs, which at times reference art history, using a literary conception of temporality. In her works that question photographic reality, she creates a visual-dramatical structure that rests not so much on external reality as on staging, abstract concepts, symbolical gestures, and literature.
Esra Özdoğan graduated from Saint-Michel French High School in Istanbul and has an MA in French Literature from Istanbul University; during her graduate work she studied Literary Criticism at Sorbonne Nouvelle LGC (Paris III) and wrote her dissertation on “The Rewriting of Myths in 20th Century French Literature.” She taught European Cultural History, General Linguistics, History of French Art, and Literary Criticism at Istanbul University’s Faculty of Literature between 1994 and 2001. She worked as editor and assistant to editor-in-chief at Yapı Kredi Publications and CAN Publishing between 2001 and 2005, and since 2001 she has served on the editorial boards of various culture and art magazines. Her essays and articles on literature and art have been published in the catalogs of numerous institutions such as Pera Museum, Sabancı Museum, and Koç Books. She has translated more than 50 books from French, including art books and exhibition catalogs. Özdoğan received her second MA degree, this time in Photography, at Marmara University in 2019. She works as a freelance writer and photographer.