The Man and The Sea is the title of the photographic series in which photographer Nadide Göksun explores the intimate relationship between a man and the natural element that has defined his entire existence: the sea. The protagonist of the images is Nedret Sekban, a Turkish painter born and raised in Trabzon, a historic port city overlooking the Black Sea. A place where water is not just scenery, but a constant presence—one that can shape memory, imagination, and the gaze of those who observe it every day.

Sekban is known for his intense, tactile paintings dedicated to the sea—works in which water becomes movement, weight, and emotional tension. For decades he has translated onto canvas the rhythm of the waves, the depth, and the power of this element. Göksun starts from this long relationship between artist and subject, but chooses to reverse it: instead of portraying the sea, she photographs the painter immersed within it.

The series is made up of black-and-white images that place Sekban beneath the water’s surface, turning the sea into a physical and emotional space. The artist’s body floats, tilts, and lets itself drift in a suspended dimension where time seems to slow down. The water becomes an all-encompassing environment, almost womb-like, evoking a primal state of safety and quiet. In this condition of surrender and silence, the body appears freed from gravity, suspended between breath and stillness.

The photographs also grow out of a deep personal bond. Göksun and Sekban share a friendship built over the years, along with countless journeys at sea. They have swum in the same waters, looked out at the same horizons, and witnessed together the sea surface’s constant shifts, transformed by light, wind, and depth. Their conversations—sometimes explicit, sometimes silent—have often returned to this shared element.

It is this shared experience that moves the project beyond a simple portrait. The Man and The Sea becomes a reciprocal gesture of observation and trust—a work that tells the story of a silent dialogue between an artist and the natural force that has accompanied him throughout his life. In Göksun’s images, Sekban is no longer only the painter of the sea: he becomes part of the sea itself.

in cover: Portrait of a Painter