Pithead

Fatih Kurceren’s image series “Pithead” attempts to perceive the Ruhr region as a place where identities and firmly established social structures are dissolving. For more than 150 years, the region between the Ruhr and Lippe rivers has been shaped by immigration and the encounter of diverse cultures. […] Fatih Kurceren – himself an immigrant – takes an unbiased look at the region and its inhabitants. To do so, he moves along the blurred edges of a society whose center seems just as unclear as the questions about its norms, about its inside and outside, and about what is foreign and what is its own. It is the people themselves who are placed at the center, and who are seen in casual stagings and observations as the ones who recreate their selves and their surroundings from moment to moment. The much-cited structural change does not seem to come true for these people. […] Yet the people are not to be shown as mere victims of social grievances, but as actors of their own life designs (Tobias Zielony).

Born in Turkey 24. 1. 76
Studies at Hacettepe University Ankara / German language and literature Relocation to Germany Studies at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen / Communications design and photography

Prizes / Grants / Talks
2018 Artist Talk, Tagung im Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg
2017 LUMA Rencontres DUMMY BOOK AWARD Arles / Shortlist
2017 ISTANBUL PHOTOBOOK FESTIVAL / Shortlist
2016 Admission to membership in the DGPh
2015 BRIDGES – Fotoprojekt Emscher Zukunft / Fotoproject Emscher Future 204 Before the Storm / Dragonflies Drift Downstream on a River (with Axel Braun) European Cultural Foundation
2013 Grant from the VG-Bildkunst for the upcoming project: „Armenians in Lebanon and its relation to new home“
2009 Grant from the NRW Art Foundation, Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia for Turkey