The Magnum Nominee on how documenting unrest in his home country of Turkey was the motivation for his photojournalism career
Emin Özmen
"For me, there is something more important than good or bad photography. It’s about the quality of your character, it’s about your soul. I believe photography follows this and is already a reflection of who you are."
- Emin Özmen
Born in 1985, Emin Özmen is concerned with documenting human rights violations in his home country of Turkey and around the world. He aims to bring attention to the suffering of those who are victims of civil unrest and social injustice.
Özmen studied photography in the Fine Arts Faculty at Marmara University of Istanbul. In 2008, he obtained a degree in documentary photography at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria.
In 2011, he worked on famine in East Africa, the disaster of the earthquake-tsunami in Japan, and economic protests in Greece. The following year, he started covering the Syrian civil war and IS crisis in Iraq, which he continues to document. Since then, he has worked in South Sudan, Niger, Nigeria, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Iraq and Turkey, among other countries.
Özmen’s work has been published by Time magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde magazine, Paris-Match and Newsweek, among others.
He has won several honors, including two World Press Photo Awards and the Public Jury Photo Prize of the Bayeux-Calvados Awards for war correspondents. He was a member of the jury for the 2016 and 2018 World Press Photo Multimedia Contests.
Özmen became a Magnum Photos nominee in 2017 and a full member in 2022. He currently lives in Istanbul.
