Ahmet Polat
Ahmet Polat (Roosendaal, 1978) is a young Dutch-Turkish photographer living in Istanbul. Polat has studied at the St. Joost Academy in Breda and currently lectures at the AKI in Enschede and the Marmara University in Istanbul.
In 2006, Ahmet Polat won the ICP Young Photographer Infinity Award.
Biography
Born of a Dutch mother and a Turkish father, growing up in a small village in the province of Brabant (NL), Polat made photographing diversity his leitmotif. In 2005, shortly after the [...] of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he decided to leave the Netherlands and settle in Istanbul.
In 2008, he was portraited for the Dutch cultural television-magazine, Van Hier Tot Tokyo.
Work
Both in his autonomous and commercial work, Polat's signature is evident: meticulous in composition, enigmatic in content, and expressing an overall warm-hearted curiosity for human relations.
Motivated to show the traditional and the modern life of his father's country, Polat can be found working both in the outskirts of Turkey and among the high-society of Istanbul. In October 2008, the French EDition of Vogue magazine published an article with Polat's view of Istanbul.
Since 1999, Polat has participated in more than 20 exhibitions, at galleries including Stroom (The Hague), RAM (Rotterdam), Karsi Sanat (Istanbul) and Galeri X-ist (Istanbul). In 2007, he had his first solo exhibition at the Istanbul Modern Art Museum.
Polat's book "...Neither Here Nor There..." (Mets & Schilt), a personal journey for identity, was released at Breda Photo 2008. This annual international photo festival also included a solo exhibition under the same title at the Nieuwe Brabantse Kunst Stichting (NBKS). The photo book was co-published with "Managing Diversity", and is initiated by the European Cultural Fund.