beyond the mountains

With his prophet-like style, Ahmet Polat is on a quest for identity, dialogue and stories. At merely 30 years old, Polat has exposed his work in more than twenty exhibitions since 1999, at galleries including Stroom (The Hague), RAM (Rotterdam), the Photo Museum (The Hague), Karsi Sanat (Istanbul), and the most prestigious Turkish art venue, The Istanbul Modern. In 2006, the International Centre of Photography (ICP), the world’s leading photography foundation, has for the first time awarded Turkish photographer Ahmet Polat as “The World’s Best Young Photographer Award”. Polat, by wining the award, showed that he could stand proud in the international arena, along side veteran photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Thomas Rose, and Jeff Krueger. Son of a forcefully adaptive Turkish lorry-driver, Ahmet Polat’s extraordinary realization has naturally placed him as the new Turkish photography torchbearer. “I wasn’t going for it” he commented when we started recording, but still got succ