Sarkis Baharoğlu, a New York-based Turkish photographer who worked with Güler for many years as his assistant, accepted the award on behalf of Güler as the 81-year-old photojournalist could not attend the Lincoln Center ceremony for reasons of health, the Anatolia news agency reported.Baharoğlu said in an acceptance speech he delivered on behalf of Güler that the veteran artist sees photography as a very important profession. “He asked me to tell you that a photographer's or a photojournalist's job is as important and requires as much professionalism as that of a brain surgeon's,” Baharoğlu said. Güler has thus become the first Turk to receive an award from the Los Angeles-based Lucie Foundation, established to provide support to the art of photography around the world.
Güler, billed as the most important living representative of creative photography in Turkey today, has a well-established international reputation. He began a career in journalism at the Yeni İstanbul newspaper in 1950. He worked as a photojournalist for Time-Life in 1956 and for Paris Match and Stern starting in 1958. Around the same time, he joined the well-known Magnum Agency. Güler was named one of the seven best photographers in the world in the British Journal of Photography Year Book 1968, published in the UK. Güler has interviewed and photographed numerous celebrities ranging from Bertrand Russell and Winston Churchill to Arnold Toynbee, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.
Many examples of Güler's photographic work are to be found in institutions such as the French National Library in Paris and the Sheldon Collection at Nebraska University as well as in private collections in Boston, Chicago and New York. His photographs are also on display at the Ludwig Museum and at Das Imaginare Photo-Museum, both in Cologne.
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