AXAKADAM

Cluster Photography & Print Exhibitor | 2025

Seçkin Erel, alias Axakadam (b.1964), is a Turkish photographer based in Strasbourg and ultra-happily married to Laura. He is a lawyer by training but completely self-taught in photography. He has spent years sourcing books to strip down styles. He was thus able to develop a little "my eye", but the latter remained inoperative for a very long time in the face of the reality that nude work was a very difficult discipline.

He was only touched by the way women photographers looked at women! But he unfortunately was a boy! Years of paralysis passed, interspersed with attempts with his Nikon F3. He has never allowed himself to show his images. Moreover, the gentleman who was developing his negatives went bankrupt. He stopped everything, until fourteen years ago, when he returned to instant photography exclusively, encouraged by Stefan Merz. He worked some years “in secret”, accumulating several hundred images. Shortly after the first convivial exhibition in Caen, invitations followed one another to his great astonishment. Since then, he shares walls every year with fantastic photographers. He had his first solo exhibition in Bologna in March 2024. He owes it above all to his collaborators, to whom goes his deepest gratitude.

“Being totally self-taught, I don’t claim any concrete approach to photography. I only have four mottos to remember while struggling to give a sense to my work. My first motto is about Native Americans’ saying that taking a picture would steal your soul… It should. The second concerns the funny anagram between the French words “image” and “magie”, that is magic. The third one is about “shibumi” or “shibui”, a Japanese concept of aesthetics that you know for sure. The fourth one is the beautiful quote: ‘It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter’ (Alfred Eisenstaedt).”

— Seçkin Erel

ARTWORK FOR PURCHASE AVAILABLE SOON

MUTATIVE DISEASE IN VENICE CARNIVAL | 2019

“Not being a man of words, I am fully into the phantasmagorical side of the process, far from trying to transmit any “specific message”. An image should contain many messages which change, substitute, dispute over time at such and such a moment. Friends say that I might have a “good vibe”. Hopefully! Without it, the elusive sparks of women’s strength will never be revealed. I only stick to my formidable collaborators to guide me towards their soul and show me the way back, safe and sound. It is the marking of these paths that is my only photographic approach.”

— Seçkin Erel