Emin Altan

Born in 1962 in Çanakkale, Emin Altan has been producing photography projects since 1996. He made a radical decision to complete his twenty-five year career as a naval architect and started to develop a visual story in which he searches for the traces of his childhood among the ruins of collapsed civilisations with the photographs he took during the world tour which he started in 2012.

Altan moved away from the idealised harmonious nature and continued his journey within the confines of the decaying industrial civilisation, which was being reclaimed by the decaying nature.

With his photographs, Altan did not seek to convey information, to introduce a place or to witness a process, but to reach the emotions of the viewer. He sought to confront a dystopian fiction created on the basis of subjective perception and personal observations, far from documentary discipline. He tried to bring together photographs in different places where he could find common traces, and aimed for the viewer to move away from the comfort of looking at the pain of the defined "other" and to establish a connection that could touch his own life.

The book Chaosmos, consisting of the photographs he took between 2012-2017, was published in 2018.

The book Chernobyl / Çernobil, consisting of photographs taken between 2015-2020, was published in 2023.

Using photography as a medium for self-expression, Altan continues his work by focusing on long-term projects and continues to take photographs of Istanbul.

 

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