I was born in Izmir in 1958 and was introduced to photography during my high school years there. My grandmother presented me with a Beirette camera as a gift on completing the Basic Photography Seminar held by the Youth Cultural Centre of that time. For many years, I took black and white photos with that manual camera without a light meter. Unforgettable memories of those times are of my relatives and friends, who constantly requested poses of themselves for posterity when I was cornered with my camera and my efforts to retreat from them!
Graduating from the Faculty of Political Sciences of Ankara University, post graduate study in the Middle East Technical University in economics followed. Then began the need to earn my living which gradually enabled journeys around the globe and at the same time self journeys.
My first slide show, “Travelling” was in the year 1995. Later followed my journeys to more diverse countries, different cultures and ways of living; the journeys to people who were endeavouring to conserve their own colours, identities and origins in this global and monotonous world.
Subsequently different slide shows on these journeys followed; among the 20 shows are, “Om Mani Padmr Hum” on religious life and Buddhism in Tibet and Ladak, “Golden Poverty” on the culture of living in Mynmar, “Iran by Yellow Bus” which are the reflections of a 15 day bus trip, “The Mystical Continent of India” which is the combination of three long journeys to India.
Articles and some of the photographs taken on these journeys have been published in various magazines. My first personal exhibition “Faces of the Earth” was opened in 2003 and the second, “Women’s World” in 2005.
I live in Istanbul, Turkey and am now a freelance photographer, at the same time lecture on photography and write articles on travel for several magazines.
