Olay

Emin Özmen

MACK

$50.00

Meaning ‘event’ or ‘incident’, Olay is a powerful chronicle of a tumultuous decade in Turkey, tirelessly documented by Emin Özmen. This first book by Özmen is a retrospective of his work to date, recounting the photographer’s homeland in a ceaseless state of turmoil, hit by dramatic events: a failed coup d’état, popular uprisings, natural disasters, political purges, and ongoing military operations. This vivid and fast-paced series of black-and- white photographs is punctuated with moments of calm in the form of meditative colour images and personal texts. Despite the omnipresent tension, a feeling of graciousness and warmth emerges from Özmen’s work, which unfolds to form a nuanced and necessary comment on the Turkish state and the sentiments of its people.

‘We are constantly being tossed around between violence and quiet daily life. Turkey gives no respite. Never a week without a drama, never a month without a major event. Olay is a documentation of Turkey, on the brink of violence and grace. Here, nothing is simple, everything intertwines and clashes, the beautiful as well as the ugly, sadness as well as joy.’ Emin Özmen

The book includes an extensive timeline introduced by Piotr Zalewski, Turkey correspondent for The Economist, as well as personal texts written by Özmen, and is co-edited with Cloé Kerhoas.

Swiss-bound hardcover
17 x 21cm, 192 pages

ISBN 978-1-913620-73-8
November 2023
€50 £45 $50

The signed edition will be signed by the artist on press.

‘We are thrust, inexorably, into the chaos Özmen witnessed first hand. He pushes us into the middle of what he is seeing. The book is a visceral documentation of the push and pull of chaotic event after chaotic event. It is, indeed, a monumental testimony to not just the rough and tumble in Turkey but, by extension, the very world we live in.’ The Washington Post 

‘[A record of] day-by-day matters of intrigue and humanity on [Turkey’s] streets.’ The Independent

‘Nothing is simple, everything is intermingled and confronted, the beautiful as well as the ugly, sadness as well as joy.’ Huck

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