Ersin Alok

Ersin Alok was born in 1937 and graduated from the Psychology Department of the Faculty of Literature and also from Commerce and Journalism at the Istanbul Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences. He founded the Institute of Photography of Mimar Sinan University. He started his artistic endeavors with painting and launched his professional efforts as photographer in 1967. Alok made substantial contribution to Industrial Photography studies. He is also known for his innovations in Archaeological and Architectural photography. He was the first to take a rough copy of a 360°photograph in Türkiye in 1986. He took deep-sea dives in various parts of the world and took photographs. He is the first Turkish photographer to take a dive in the Red Sea. He won the First Prize at the 5th Paris Biennial as part of the "Absurd" theme. He then won first prizes in Rome, Brussels, Sofia, Warsaw and Barkley, USA. In 1989, the World Photography Organisation entitled Alok to represent Asia in Helsinki and he held the Panoramic Triangle exhibition under the theme of NATURE joined by three other friends. He created a Sound Archive based on his works on sound records. He also founded Türkiye's first DIABANK in 1967 with an archive of nearly five million diafilms. He has published 24 books until now. Alok is also engaged in documentary films. He has over 10.000 photographs of Kayaüstü in Eastern Anatolia which he discovered himself. He has undertaken prehistoric and anthropological research everywhere across the world except for New Zealand and the South Pole. He has also done research in Hindu and Buddhist temples on the Himalayas on "Sharing Life and Sexual Behaviors". He carried out in-depth studies of events and phenomena that influence art and organized tens of conferences across the world. Alok brings an artistic dimension to every detail he captures through his lens. He has more than eleven million visuals and diafilms in his archive.