Bilal Bikile's photography emerges from what he calls "withdrawn observance," a practice of witnessing that attends to what goes unexamined despite being in plain view. Rather than capturing conventional compositions, he enters the standard frame of a landscape or photo opportunity and extracts what is hidden within it, discovering secondary narratives, overlooked geometries, and concealed beauty that exist beneath the surface of the obvious. His approach favors spontaneity and intuition: street photography shot without looking through the viewfinder, compositions unearthed from within familiar, prominent locales. Color, shadow, movement, and unconventional framing become his primary subjects, revealing forgotten realms within the everyday.
His process oscillates between immediacy and deliberation, between the rush of the street and the patient search for narrative within a scene. In projects like Al-Ghayb (The Unseen), photographed during the 2020 pandemic in Istanbul and other Turkish cities, Bikile explored figures seen only from behind, faces intentionally concealed, and the quiet beauty of spaces emptied by crisis. His work carries a tender mysticism, an invitation to look beyond the tangible world and consider what remains veiled, unseen, yet deeply present. Through this lens, photography becomes an act of preservation and sanctification, honoring both the animate and inanimate with equal reverence.