Inspired by the notions of varying dimensions and surprise Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, Turkish digital artist and photographer Aydın Büyüktaş has created a fanciful Istanbul in his latest project. Aerial depictions of the city turn the landscape on itself—literally.
Using a drone, his photographs have been digitally manipulated to appear as if the city is doubling back over itself creating a fantastical curved world.
Büyüktaş’s images can appear disorientating at first sight with the viewer’s eye naturally following what should be linear forms that end up being viewed from alternate perspectives. The scenes resemble those from Christopher Nolan’s Inception and Interstellar movies where cityscapes are curvaceous, both in dreams and in space.
Creating the curving montages in a flat world was no easy task. Drone’s were sent up into the skies, but Büyüktaş had to rely on the weather and wildlife to be on his side.
“So many times I had to turn back without a picture because of bad weather, technical problems, or birds attacking the drone,” he said.
Once he had collected all the images, Büyüktaş adopted the much more grounded approach of editing and patching them together in Photoshop.
“We live in places that most of the times don’t draw our attention, places that transform our memories, places that the artist gives another dimension; where the perceptions that generally crosses our minds will be demolished and new ones will arise,” Büyüktaş says on his website. “These works aims to leave the viewer alone with a surprising visuality ironic as well,multidimensional romantic point of view.”
