Nadide Goksun (b. 1967) is a Turkish/American artist working primarily with
photography and ceramics.
She is a graduate of the Bogazici University in Istanbul, the Sungshin Women's
University in Seoul and participates on the ICP Continuing Education Program in
New York.
Goksun's work has been exhibited in several group exhibitions including Foley
Gallery’s Exhibition Lab in NYC, Griffin Museum of Photography, Soho Photo
Gallery’s National competition, Photo Review’s 36th Annual International
Photography Competition, Head On Photo Festival, Sydney-Australia, Julia
Margaret Cameron Awards, Barcelona-Spain, Lens Culture’s 250 New Examples
of the 21st Century Street Photography among others. Her first solo show
“Swimmers” was exhibited in Bondi Beach, Sydney at the Head On Photo
Festival in 2021. Her artwork has been reproduced in The New York Times, PDN
(Photo District News), ArtAscent International Art and Literature Journal,
Pastiche, All About Photo, Dodho, and SHOTS Magazine.
She currently lives and works in New York State.
SWIMMERS
My childhood memories of summer holidays on the Aegean seaside have shaped
a deep and lasting relationship with water in my psyche. As a child, playing in the
sea brought me both relaxation and joy. Swimming felt like entering a foreign
terrain—an access to a muted, quieter world away from the noise of the land. In
that sense of suspension and otherness, I found a rare kind of peace. The
shifting blue of the water, never constant, changing with light and time, deepened
this feeling of being in a living, breathing environment.
As I grew older, I began to associate the experience of being submerged with
what I imagine to be a prenatal state—an enveloping space of safety, serenity,
and inner balance. Swimming became a way of returning to that feeling, a way of
experiencing freedom beyond the physical body. In water, I encounter something
both naïve and profound—a magical and sensual state that recalls youthful
innocence while remaining deeply present.
In my series Swimmers, I aim to capture these sensations through the bodies of
others, intertwined with my own emotional experience. I work in black and white
to remove the seduction of color and instead emphasize form, texture, and the
subtle play of light. This choice allows the images to become more introspective
and timeless. Despite the constant movement of both the subjects and myself,
photography offers the possibility of suspending a fleeting moment within this
fluid world.
These images exist in a space between stillness and motion, where bodies drift,
float, and hover in a liquid abyss.
AAP Magazine
AAP Magazine 17 Portrait
AAP Magazine 34 Shapes
Article
My Father's Toys
Swimmers
