Visual aesthetics in cinema and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's cinematography

Image aesthetics has been an important issue since cinema emerged as an art using photography as a language. In this sense, advancing relationship between cinema and technology profoundly affects and alters perspective of the image aesthetic. This differentiation becomes evident both in commercial and independent artistic cinema and it influences the language of cinema either directly and indirectly. Attributed to its structure combining different art discliplines, cinema can influence, manipulate and even rehabilitate society. However, for both purposes, cinematographic tools determines the structure of expression and they are strongly influenced by technical and technological state. Cinema turns into an artistic production from a technological entertainment tool with the help of concious use of camera movement, light, color, framing, conceptualization and capturing scales. Every cinematographic component used by the director on purpose creates its own meaning and this brings movie a new artistic level. Directors form an original expression directing audiences cognitive and emotional mind and this carries the cinema to a completely new arena different than being an entertainment tool. Nuri Bilge Ceylan as an internationally distinguished director using image aesthetic and creating a unique language, is a great example for a director using this perspective. This thesis aims to investigate the influence of image aesthetic on cinematic meaning. For this purpose, theoretical perspective of aesthetic is evaluated first and historical development of it is investigated within the frame mentioned above. Then, influences of cinematographic components on creating cinematic language is provided related to the examples in literature. Within this frame, three movies directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan; "Cocoon" (1995), "Three Monkeys" (2008) and "The Wild Pear Tree" (2018) are investigated for image asthetics. Key Words: Aesthetics, Cinema, Image Aesthetics, Nuri Bilge Ceylan