Guy Martin graduated with a first class B.A(HONS) in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport in 2006. Guy began pursuing long term personal documentary projects while studying at Newport, one of which, ‘Trading over the Borderline’- a documentation of the border region between Turkey and Northern Iraq and its trade routes – won him the Guardian and Observer Hodge Award for young photographers. Inspired by regions that are in periods of transition, he went on to pursue a long term project on the re- birth of the Cossack movement and Russian nationalism in Southern Russia and the Caucasus from 2005 to 2007, which culminated in the documentation of the Russian/Georgia conflict in August 2008.
From January 2011 he began to document the revolutions sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa, photographing the revolution in Egypt before documenting the civil war in Libya from the east to the besieged western city of Misrata in April 2011. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, D Magazine, FADER Magazine, Monocle Magazine, Huck Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, ARTWORLD, The NewStatesman, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Newsweek Japan, Harpers, Le Monde Dagens Næringsliv - D2/Magasinet and Time. In 2011 he became an associate lecturer in Press and Editorial Photography program at the University of Falmouth, UK. In 2012 his work from Egypt and Libya formed the basis for joint exhibitions at the Spanish Cultural Centre in New York, HOST Gallery in London, the Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff and the SIDE Gallery in Newcastle. He had his first solo show “Shifting Sands” at the Poly Gallery in Falmouth in January 2012. His work on Libya’s missing formed the basis for a newspaper print book published by HerePress and was distributed for free on the London Underground tube network.
Since 2012 he has been based in Istanbul Turkey, where he is beginning a new long term project on the ebb and flow of Turkish power and influence. Frustrated by the limitations, preconceptions and cliché’s that confront photographers working in the middle east, Guy began a long term look into how blending work from the scenes of soap operas, and the daily violent struggle for the streets of Istanbul can work and interact with one another. The first part of this project, “City of Dreams” chapters 1 & 2 were exhibited as part of the 2nd PhotoReporter Festival in St.Brieuc, France in October 2013 – it has also been selected as a finalist entry in the Sony World Photography Awards 2014 and won the 2nd FIPCOMM award for economic stories 2014. City of dreams is also exhibiting as part of the finalist’s exhibition for the LensCulture photography awards 2014 and has been recognized with a Emergency grant in 2015 to continue with a new phase in the project.
Guy is represented by Panos Pictures.
