For press & curators
Everything below is yours to copy. Photo credits are contractual — please carry them.
Proposing an exhibition: what is available and how the work has hung. Reproducing a photograph: what a request needs to say. Programming a talk: subjects and past talks.
Biography — short
Samet Durgun (b. 1988) is a Berlin-based photographer and visual artist. His monograph Come Get Your Honey (Kehrer Verlag, 2021) was made with queer, trans and gender-nonconforming refugees and asylum seekers in Berlin. His work proposes photography as listening rather than seeing.
Biography — long
As a first-generation immigrant and queer artist living in Berlin, I've grappled with the question of belonging. I found connection with gender-nonconforming, queer, transgender refugees and asylum seekers in the city, whose intricate identities inspire deep respect in me. My work challenges the traditional view of photography as merely seeing, proposing that it can be more about listening. I seek to capture people in their wholeness, embracing their differences while recognizing the limitations of representation. My images reflect my personal relationships and impressions of their stories, making them a subjective representation of my own experiences.
Durgun holds a BA from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, and was part of the inaugural class of the Common Ground mentorship at Universität der Künste Berlin (2020/21, class of Mathilde ter Heijne). In 2021 he received the LensCulture Critics' Choice Award, selected by Alona Pardo, and a GUP Fresh Eyes talent selection. His work has been exhibited at Fotografiska Berlin, Kunstmuseum Brandts in Denmark and the Museum für Fotografie, Berlin.
Works list
- Emrah's Kitchen — Edition of 30, numbered and signed, ≈ 20 × 30 cm, 8 × 12 in, Deluxe archival pigment print
- Anniversary of the House of Royals — Edition of 30, numbered and signed, ≈ 20 × 30 cm, 8 × 12 in, Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle
Selected exhibitions
- 2026Gaze and Skin — LANGER Space for Photography, Mannheim
- 2025Come Get Your Honey — Fotografiska Berlin — Emerging Berlin, Berlin
- 2024–25Love, Lust and Freedom — Kunstmuseum Brandts, Odense
- 2024Off to Elsewhere — Münchner Kammerspiele × Der Greif, Munich
- 2021Seen By #15: Nothing Ever Happened (Yet) — Museum für Fotografie, Berlin
Selected by
- 2025Felix Hoffmann, Mona Schubert & Marit Lena Herrmann, FOTO ARSENAL WIEN — Der Greif Guest Room “Messy”: The Sun Sets on Beautiful Ones, 2019
- 2023Damarice Amao & Matthias Pfaller, Centre Pompidou, Paris — Der Greif Guest Room “Empathy”: Reenactment of an Arrival, 2019
- 2022Alfred Weidinger & Maria Venzl, OÖ Landes-Kultur — Der Greif Guest Room: Mother Tattoo, 2020, and Before the Party, 2020
- 2021Anika Meier & Max Siedentopf — Der Greif Guest Room: Mother Tattoo, 2020
Awards
- 2021LensCulture Critics' Choice Award — selected by Alona Pardo
- 2021GUP Fresh Eyes talent selection
Education
- BA, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul
- Common Ground mentorship, Universität der Künste Berlin, 2020/21 — inaugural edition, class of Mathilde ter Heijne
Mandatory photo credits
Installation photography is licensed for use with credit only — carry the line exactly as given, on every platform it appears.
- Poster: LANGER. Space for Photography, with the Kulturamt der Stadt Mannheim
- Photo: Ivan Erofeev / @ivaan_erofeev
- Photo: David Stjernholm / @david_stjernholm