Magnum x PR | Summer Program: The Essence of Documentary Photography

"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."

Born in 1985, Emin Özmen is dedicated to documenting human rights violations in his homeland Turkey and around the world. His goal is to draw attention to those who have become victims of civil unrest and social injustice.

Emin Özmen studied photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Marmara University of Istanbul. In 2008, he received his degree in documentary photography from the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria.

In 2011, he covered the East African famine, the Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster, and the economic protests in Greece. The following year, he began documenting the Syrian civil war and the ISIS crisis in Iraq, continuing this documentation since then. He has since worked in South Sudan, Niger, Nigeria, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Turkey.

Emin Özmen's work has been published in TIME Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Paris Match, and Newsweek, among others.

He has received numerous accolades, including two World Press Photo Awards and the Public Jury Photo Prize of the Bayeux-Calvados Awards for war correspondents. He also served as a jury member for the World Press Photo Multimedia Contests in 2016 and 2018.

Emin Özmen became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2017 and a full member in 2022.

"Photography guides me into the routes where I can stay amazed."

Born in Belgium in 1986, Bieke Depoorter received her Master's degree in Photography from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. Three years later, at the age of 25, she became a nominee member of Magnum Photos and became a full member in 2016.

Bieke Depoorter has received numerous awards, including the Magnum Expression Award, the Larry Sultan Photography Award, and the Prix Levallois. In 2023, she was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.

She has published six photobooks: 'Agata', 'Ou Menya', 'I Am About to Call It a Day', 'As It May Be', 'Sète #15', and 'Blinked Myself Awake'. In 2020, she co-founded her own publishing platform Des Palais with Tom Callemin.

The relationships Bieke Depoorter builds with her subjects form the foundation of her artistic practice. Chance encounters serve as the starting point for her work. How these interactions naturally evolve determines the subsequent creative process. Some of her projects emerge through continuously questioning photography as a medium itself.

"Now that everyone in the developed world seems to own some form of camera, a different space has opened for documentary photographers. It's a space free from specific events, where there are different expectations, where it is first and foremost about ideas. Now we can all take pictures, with varying degrees of ability, it's what we do with our cameras that counts."

Born in England in 1959, Mark Power studied painting (1978-1981) before quickly turning to photography, spending the next decade working on editorial and charity commissions. His complex and meticulously crafted images, often created using large format cameras, established him as one of the pioneers of British photography. He began teaching photography at the University of Brighton in 1992, eventually becoming a Professor of Photography until his resignation from teaching in 2017.

His tenure at the university coincided with his transition towards long-term self-initiated projects, which ran parallel to large-scale commissioned works in the industrial sector. Over his forty-year career, he has published 14 photobooks.

Mark Power's work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums worldwide and is held in several significant public and private collections. He became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2002 and a full member in 2007.