Kerem Yucel

Biography:
Kerem Yucel was born in Istanbul. After earning his B.S. in agricultural engineering, he started to work as an environmental impact specialist in oil pipeline projects. Thanks to these projects, he traveled far and wide throughout Anatolia and had the chance to get to know both the geography and the cultures of this ancient land inside out. His interest in photography flourished during those years when he realized that he could get in touch with and express the common concerns of humanity better as a photographer than an environmental specialist. Photography became not just a vocation for Kerem, but developed into a tool to understand life at the highest level and express and honor it through images. He continues his career as a professional photographer since 2006.

Kerem has spent 8 months in Kashmir after arriving there in the aftermath of the Pakistani earthquake as a part of an NGO team. He photographed stories in a region tense with political strife and under constant threat of an imminent war. After Kashmir, he participated in humanitarian projects in Middle East and Central Asia.

Continuing today to work for such well-known international organizations as UN, ECHO, Diakonie, Malteser-International, Help, JICA, CAN and STL, Kerem Yucel photographs Central Asia, Africa, Middle East, Arabian Peninsula and the Caucasus for national and international magazines.

In Turkey, his photographs are featured regularly in Turkey’s premier exploration and geography magazine, Atlas, of which he is also the photography editor.

Kerem continues to focus on social, cultural and environmental issues and cultivate the dramatic narrative in every context through his arresting images.

Exhibition: Welcome/Xer Hati/Ehlen ve Sehlen
For most people in Turkey, guests are greeted with these words in homes. The most beautiful room, the comfortable bed, the lace towels are given to the guests, the little-used dining service are used to serve the meat dishes, so that the guests feel special.

Arrivals should not necessarily even give advanced notice. Even if they appear as a surprise guest, they are treated as guests from God. However this hospitality has an expiration date for both the homeowner and the guests; as the saying goes, “Being guest is good for three days.”

This traditional time frame is more than enough to describe what the Syrians in Turkey, who have not been here for three days but for three full years, have gone through.

Those who got caught in the middle of the conflict between the parties, those who lost their relatives, who lives got destroyed along with their countries; all those family face these two choices today:

- First, to stay in the camps they were sent and be literally condemned to “life imprisonment” as it goes in the saying “Guests cannot choose their place but have to accept what they are presented with.”
- The other is to be a victim of the most brutal attacks of the war of life despite all their fatigue. Not to raise a voice at males working for half wages (sometimes even without getting a fee agreed), women and children reduced to begging in the streets, young girls being sold as young mistresses, the younger ones being exploited under the name of “child brides…”

This photo exhibition showcases the lives of those people who are called “guests” without being allowed the status of a “refugee”, and explores how in Turkey these people have become a sub-layer of society; and tries to see through our eyes what these people go through.

This post is also available in: Turkish