Breaking Glass Ceilings

F. Dilek Uyar is a lawyer and has been taking pictures for 10 years now.

- F. Dilek Uyar

She has won numerous accolades from prestigious organizations for her photographs. For the last two years, she has been working on a project that will raise awareness in the community about cancer patients’ economic and psychological difficulties. Being a woman is hard in Turkey, being a woman photographer is harder. Despite all the obstacles, she takes photographs in her country and tries to show that if a woman wants, she can do whatever she wants without sacrificing her principles and bowing down to anyone, whatever the circumstances.

You are a lawyer as well as a skilled photographer. How do you strike such a perfect balance between these two diverse fields?

You’re right, photography and law are completely different fields. For me, photography makes me breathe after the boring and depressing atmosphere of the courts. Most of the time, people miss the real taste of life and only focus on earning more money. One day, I realized that my days are numbered and I have nothing to leave for the world to remember me by. Then, I started to take photos to attain my peace of mind and discover myself in the process.

You are working with cancer patients for your current project.

Tell us more about this project. According to the current reports of WHO, one out of six people have lost their lives due to cancer and of those losses, 70% have been from low or middle-income countries. In my country, too, one out of 5 people lose their lives due to cancer. As cancer is the most widespread illness in every society, I have decided to promote consciousness in society by raising awareness in this respect. Another important motivation in choosing this topic as a field of interest was my being first in my country to be concentrating on it.