Raphael Avcioglu

Was there a defining moment that pinpointed photography as the career for you?

You could say my photographic journey began almost six year ago when I first picked up a DSLR, but I would say that my journey truly began four years ago when I got sober and really started to believe in my dream, and realise it with proper focus and intention.

Before that I had dreams, but I was quite delusional and unrealistic about what I was doing and where I was going.

The journey has consumed me. It’s taken the most amount of energy, it’s the most time I have ever put into anything, and I would say it has become the defining point of my life. It is this mentality I was convinced I needed to have if I wanted to ‘make it’ in this field.

To me success wasn’t just getting paid to take photographs but rather getting paid to take the photographs you want. Getting paid for your own style or DNA blueprint within the images.

I felt I would have to work day and night to accomplish this and I have.

What inspired you to explore nude photography?

I first started shooting nudes six months after picking up a camera.

To me it was always the rawest form of photography. I always felt it made an incredible impact and added a deeper narrative to a photograph.

However, after getting sober I stayed away from nude photography for almost a year. I moved to Paris where my focus became music, fashion, and occasional fine art nude. But when COVID happened, I switched almost completely to shooting nudes. This was the same time where Instagram really started to crack down on the nude photography community.

I was getting a lot of work censored and this made me understand even more that this was my mission; it had me connecting with nude models, yogis, and nudists all around the world. My inner need to protest was pushing a lot of my work but also the positivity I was seeing from models and the way people would connect when they were vulnerable and unclothed in a non-sexual artistic setting.

This became very important and pushed me to want to create more in this space.

Do you have a particular message that you would like to transmit through your work?

I want to show people that there is a way to create nude work that is not sexual.

There is of course nothing wrong with photography that is sexual but I wanted to aim for another side, which can be seen within the bulk of my portfolio; that we can embrace all body shapes and sizes and accept human beings in their rawest forms without needing to censor and therfore shame ourselves.

The fight against Instagram is exhausting. I have had multiple accounts grow to 25k followers only to be taken down with no hope and no one to talk to get the accounts reactivated.

That is a lot of work to be taken away for sharing nude art.

As a well-established international fine art photographer, it hurts my business to lose connections within the social media world in this way.

We have no way to fight other than to keep sharing, start new accounts, and start over. This has been an invasive and exhausting process that is truly destroying the art world. And it’s not just me of course; it’s so many people. And it’s getting worse.

It keeps the wider media from sharing this beautiful work out of fear; so many artists are not able to grow in the way they could if they chose fashion, reportage or nature photography as a career. TikTok’s even worse in this way.

So I don’t know what my future in the nude art world looks like.

I am not sure if I will start to diversify into fashion and try and have a balance; grow my audience so I can have an influential voice and change the world’s perspective from a place of influence.

But I’m grateful for platforms like lickerishlibrary.com who are strong and not afraid to push against the censorship police. Thank you!