Semiha ES

Semiha Es (1912-2011) was Turkey's first female travel and war photographer. She started her photography career by traveling the world with her husband and left an important mark on Turkish media by working as a war photographer for many years.

Who is Semiha Es?

Born in 1912, Semiha Es started working at a young age after receiving a good education. At the age of 15, she started working as a switchboard clerk at the telephone administration, where she met the famous journalist Hikmet Feridun Es. After her marriage, she started traveling abroad with her husband. This process also marked the beginning of Semiha Es's introduction to photography. Semiha Es learned photography over time and became a professional photojournalist, focusing especially on war and travel photography.

Travel and War Photography

One of the most prominent aspects of Semiha Es's life is the trips she took with her husband to various parts of the world and the photographs she took during these trips. During Feridun Es's career as a journalist, Semiha Es accompanied him and took a series of photographs during his travels abroad. During this period, she took photographs of many different subjects, from Hollywood stars to African tribes. Semiha Es left her mark not only in her travels but also in war photography. With the striking photographs she took in war zones such as Korea, Vietnam and Rwanda, she showed the world the harsh realities of war. From the 1950s onwards, she worked with her husband for the Hürriyet newspaper and photographed the traces of war. He carried soldiers fighting in the Turkish battalion in Korea, tribal life in remote villages in Africa and the extraordinary world of the Far East to the pages of the magazine. The photographs he took during this period attracted great attention not only in Turkey but all over the world.

Impact and Legacy

Semiha Es is a figure who challenged the social norms of her time not only as a photographer but also as a woman. Her work is of great importance in a period when women in Turkey had a presence in business life, especially in a difficult and male-dominated field such as photography. Semiha Es, who made history as Turkey's first female representative in the field of war photography, was a source of inspiration for many journalists and photographers.

Especially with her courage and observations in war photography, she revealed the brutality and suffering of war. The images reflected through her lens are not only photographs but also important documents that bear witness to human history. In 2011, Semiha Es, who was awarded the Honorary Prize at the Turkey Photography Artist Awards, died in Istanbul at the age of 100. Her body was buried in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery next to her husband Hikmet Feridun Es.

Semiha Es's life and work, both as a photographer and as a woman, have left important traces in history, and her story continues to inspire many people in Turkey and around the world.