By Heidi Trautmann

Many of us will know Buket Özatay as the organiser of the yearly photo competition, the Öztan Özatay Foundation Competition founded by her and her brothers to honour her father and to support local photography. Buket is also one of the most active photographers in the TRNC in art photography. She not only travels around the world to find new motives, new colours and human situations but she participates in many international art photography competitions. So she won a first prize in South Cyprus last year, and as I learnt from her today, she won an Honourable Mention for four photos at a competition by the ISF – Images sans Frontières France  – A French Photo Organisation situated in Algiers, and all her four photos were presented at the exhibition in Italy. She as a female member of the ISF was permitted to send in four photos for the exhibition in Italy and all four were accepted. She and another Greek Cypriot woman were representing Cyprus. 

More confirmation for her art, i.e. confirming that her photographs are art, she received with the distinction ‘R-ISF.1’, a diploma edited in April 2014.

Another acceptance as member she had been given by the ‘Image Colleague Society’ in the USA.

There are several steps one can work and apply for, and the next step for Buket is the diploma for the distinction R-ISF-2, the higher grade of art one has reached with one’s work, and it is this second level Buket is going for now. She explains: “You can apply for this when you have more acceptances in international competitions under the patronage of FIAP, PSA and ISF. Furthermore, I have applied for the AFIAP (artist) title which is bestowed by the International Federation of Photographic Art, which is even more important than the other two and I am expecting to be granted this title by the end of this year.”

Art photography is not only to master the technical possibilities of your camera and to be able to manipulate your photos with a computer programme, it is the sensibility you have when approaching a theme, to understand the laws of light, composition and colours. Above that, I like Buket’s photos very much for their human warmth and understanding.