Renowned Turkish photographer receives lifetime achievement award

Turkish photographer Ara Guler was presented the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Seventh Annual Lucie International Photography Awards in New York on Monday. Photographer Sarkis Baharoglu received the award on behalf of Guler, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony due to health problems. Ara Guler was born in Istanbul in 1928. The most important living representative of creative photography in Turkey today, he has a well-established international reputation. He began a career in journalism with the newspaper Yeni Istanbul in 1950. He became a photojournalist for Time-Life in 1956 and for Paris Match and Stern in 1958. Around the same time, he joined the Magnum Agency. In the 1968 British Journal of Photography Year Book, Guler was named one of the seven best photographers in the world. In 1962, he received the Master of Leica award in Germany. Guler has held hundreds of exhibits of his work all over the world. He has also interviewed and photographed numerous celebrities, ranging from Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill to Arnold Toynbee, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Many examples of Guler's work can be found in institutions such as the French National Library in Paris and the Sheldon Collection at Nebraska University as well as in private collections in Boston, Chicago and New York. His photos are also on display at the Ludwig Museum and at Das Imaginare Photo-Museum, both in Cologne. Based in Los Angeles, the Lucie Foundation was established to provide support to the world photographye. The foundation provides scholarships to young photographers and organizes workshops on photography. Guler was the first Turk to receive an award from the foundation.