Emin Özmen (Turkey, 1985) studied physics at 19 Mayıs University in Samsun, before moving on to photographic studies in the fine arts faculty at Marmara University in Istanbul.
In 2008, he published two photobooks, "Humans of Anatolia" and "Microcredit Stories in Turkey", a collection of stories on women who were able to access a microcredit in Turkey. That same year, he obtained a degree in media photography and documentary (photography) at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria.
In 2011, his work on drought in Somalia was published in a book and he worked on the disaster of Tohoku Earthquake and economic protests in Greece. The following year, he covered the Syrian civil war and ISIS crises in Iraq.
Since 2012, Özmen has been working on his long-term project "Limbo - Les Limbes" and has undertaken a long study of photographic documentation with the populations uprooted by the spiral of conflicts.
He has traveled many times to Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Italy and France to meet people who were forced to become “refugees”. His work has been published by TIME magazine, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde magazine M, Paris Match and L’Obs, among others. One of his pictures was selected by TIME as their Top 10 Photographs of the Year 2013.
Ozmen has won several awards, among them two World Press Photo awards and Public Prize of The Bayeux Calvados awards for war correspondents. Emin was a member of the jury of 2016 World Press Photo Multimedia contest.
In 2013 he founded Istanbul based photography collective Agence Le Journal with independent photographers.
Özmen currently lives in Istanbul where he works on his long-term projects.
