Ahmed Yilmaz

The camera is a mirror and a door. Growing up with a Turkish father and a German mother, I was constantly asked to explain which side I belonged to, as though identity could only ever point in one direction. My photographs use mirrors, glass and reflective surfaces deliberately, so a single portrait can show two angles of the same face at once, or let a background bleed into a subject's skin. I want the images to resist the kind of easy categorisation I grew up being asked for. Most of my subjects are people who, like me, have grown up between languages, passports or expectations, and I work closely with them over several sessions before making a final image, so the resulting portrait reflects a negotiated understanding rather than a snapshot judgement. Photography, for me, is less about capturing a fixed truth and more about holding multiple truths open at once.