Gallery | Ozgur Keles

Photography & Visual Work

Observe. Transform. Materialize.

From macro to astro; from living structures to manufactured matter.

I photograph how light reveals structure in living systems, landscapes, cities, and the sky. I transform selected images through symmetry, repetition, and computation, and extend the same visual questions into microscopy, scientific visualization, and additive manufacturing. Across these practices, I return to folds, branching, boundaries, pores, lattices, fields, repetition, and change.

Symmetric construction of Chicago towers forming a city within a city, built from a long-exposure photograph — **City in City Chicago 3**
From the *Four-fold* series, 2014 · Long-exposure city photograph reconstructed through quadrant repetition

Structure Does Not Belong to One Scale

These systems do not share one physical mechanism. Their relationship here is visual: light reveals boundaries, hierarchy, density, repetition, and change across radically different scales.

Combined figure: rose photograph beside colorized scanning-electron micrographs of its petal, and grayscale micrographs of 3D-printed ABS rasters and fracture surfaces — **A structure study across scale.** (a) Rose at life size — scale bar 10 mm. (b, c) The petal under the SEM — crack bridging and fracture surface, 50 µm bars. (d) Petal surface morphology — 10 µm bar. (e, f, g) Printed ABS: top raster, internal raster, and raster stack — 1 mm bars. (i) Road-level fracture — 100 µm bar. SEM panels are colorized; all scale bars retained.

Interior of an orchid: magenta petals folding around a leopard-spotted yellow lip and pale column — Fold — orchid, 2021

Transmission electron micrograph of nanocrystal clusters branching along a lacy carbon web — Branch — nanocrystals on lacy carbon · TEM, 2018

Diagonal strata of gray rock crossed by ochre lichen bands and dark seams, Safranbolu — Boundary — stone strata, Safranbolu, 2026

Monochrome field of towering cumulus clouds — Field — cloud study, 2026

Printed Ti-6Al-4V lattice face beside a US dime and a millimeter scale — Lattice — printed Ti‑6Al‑4V, dime for scale

01 · Observe

Light, life, matter, and place

Sustained attention first — what light does to structure before anything is made of it.

Dense sculptural smoke plume rising against black — Light as MaterialOne studio night; each plume formed once and disappeared.

Dragonfly with patterned wings at close range — Living StructuresSwamp darner (*Epiaeschna heros*) · macro, flowers, and birds — structure across living scales.

Fractured dark coastal rock with pale mineral veins, Sinop — Matter, Surface, and TimeGeology read as texture, 2013–2026.

Fishing boat at sunset, its flag dipping toward the sun above a glitter path on the water — The Black SeaThe working coast — swell, ships, last light.

02 · Transform

Repetition becomes construction

Observation becomes rule; the source remains evidence while repetition builds a new image.

Published visual work — JOM cover and member profile, February 2015

JOM magazine cover, February 2015, carrying a colorful statistical point-cloud artwork — **JOM, February 2015** — a Four-fold point-cloud construction on the cover of the member journal of TMS

First page of the JOM member feature about the artist — “Özgür Keleş’s Symmetry Art Makes You Look Twice” — p. 274

Second page of the JOM member feature with photographs — The constructions and the reasoning, in print — p. 275

03 · Materialize

Images, structures, and physical outcomes

Rule becomes matter — stone read closely, ceramics measured, metal printed, objects made public.

Across Scales

Natural and manufactured structures are placed in visual dialogue through hierarchy, porosity, interfaces, and repetition. They are not presented as physically equivalent systems.

Jointed coastal rock pavement broken into angular blocks, Sinop — Natural surface — jointed coastal pavement, Sinop, 2026

Scanning electron micrograph showing clustered zirconia powder particles and interparticle voids; scale bar 100 micrometers — Particulate microstructure — zirconia powder, SEM · 100 μm scale bar

Tall triple-porosity 3D-printed Ti-6Al-4V lattice for bone scaffolds, oblique macro view — Triple-porosity 3D-printed Ti‑6Al‑4V for bone scaffolds, 2022

Cultural Images in Printed Form — San José.STL

Community drawings and cultural imagery were translated into printed relief objects and sound-forms and exhibited in 2023. The project was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and developed in collaboration with Yoon Chung Han, Associate Professor of Graphic Design, San José State University. Project photography by R.C. Bain.

Black 3D-printed vase carrying raised outlines of children's drawings — smiling round figures in relief (a handwritten name is obscured) — Printed vase — children’s drawings in relief, 2023

Wall of black and white 3D-printed circular sound-forms in raking light, a hand reaching toward one — Sound-forms on exhibit, 2023

Ongoing visual narratives

Time, place, and narrative

Long-form visual narratives of home, distance, and travel.

Water droplets on glass in soft window light

The View From Home

2020–2021

Window light, drops, sky, garden — close observation during confinement.

Clouds and aircraft wing from a window seat

From the Window Seat

2013–2024

A decade of crossings between Turkey and the United States.

Master blacksmith at his forge, holding a flaming iron with the fire glowing beside him

Şahin Usta

Safranbolu, 2026

A master blacksmith at his forge in the old bazaar — iron out of the fire, craft held in the hands.

Selected recognition

JOM cover and member profile, 2015 · Four-fold, solo presentation, Chicago, 2014 · Chicago Photography Center juried selection, 2014 · San José.STL, NEA-supported project with Yoon Chung Han, ICA San José, 2023–24

Star field through wind-blurred oak branches; the Andromeda galaxy a small elongated glow — **Andromeda through the oaks** · stacked 10-second exposures, September 2020. The calmest thing in the frame is a galaxy.

My visual and scientific work share an interest in how patterns emerge across scale, transform through process, and become persistent structures.

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