Yıldız Moran left Robert College in 1950 during her final year, and was encouraged by her art historian uncle, Mazhar Şevket İpşiroğlu, to relocate to England. She studied photography at Bloomsbury and Ealing Technical Colleges from 1950 to 1952 and worked with renowned photographer John Vickers of the Old Vic Theatre. With her technical and theoretical education and hands-on experience in studio and stage shooting, she effectively merged the two to produce impressive work. Her first exhibition took place in Cambridge in 1953 and five more followed in London in 1954, drawing considerable attention. She traveled across various European countries and published a photography book on Spain and Portugal before returning to Turkey in 1954. She held five personal exhibitions between 1955 and 1962, with her last exhibition in 1970 in Istanbul, after which she only participated in retrospective exhibitions. Initially specialized in portraiture, her work evolved into a poetic exploration of light, shadow, and the nuanced greys of black-and-white photography. Treating landscapes as bodily figures and vice versa, Yıldız Moran unveils the musicality and undeniable eroticism in still life.
Due to an illness challenging her ability to walk, she later shifted her focus from photography and film to working as a lexicographer and translator. In 1982, Turkey’s first professional woman photographer with an academic background was distinguished with an honorary membership from the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts, Institute of Photography, for her contributions to the art of photography. Her works were most recently included in shows such as "I-You-Them: A Century of Artist Women" curated by Deniz Artun, at Meşher and "Kindness of the Shadow” at Galeri Nev and ADAS.
