My family did not move to America. We fled to it. Istanbul to Paris to New York — carrying nothing but instinct and the quiet conviction that displacement is not the end of a story. It is the beginning of another one.
I was born in Istanbul in 1979. My earliest memories are fragments: the call to prayer echoing across the rooftops, the light off the Bosphorus in late afternoon, the texture of old stone under small hands. Istanbul is a city built on layers — Byzantine, Ottoman, modern — and even at four years old, that layered beauty was entering my nervous system. It would take decades before I understood that those early impressions became the foundation of my photography.
My family fled Turkey when I was four. The circumstances were not a choice — they were a necessity. We left with what we could carry and landed first in Paris before making our way to the United States. That first displacement was the beginning of a pattern: 8 displacements and reinventions across a lifetime, each one stripping away what was familiar and forcing a rebuild from scratch.
We settled in SoHo, Manhattan, in an era when SoHo was still gritty and affordable — a neighborhood of artists, cast-iron facades, and cobblestone streets. Growing up there as a Turkish immigrant kid with a name nobody could pronounce (“Biricik” means “unique” in Turkish, which felt more like a burden than a gift at the time) was an education in adaptability. You learn to read rooms, switch codes, and find your footing in unfamiliar territory. Those are survival skills for an immigrant. They are also essential skills for an entrepreneur.
At 19, I founded ICEe PC, a custom computing company. I knew hardware, I knew what people needed, and I knew how to build things that worked. By 25, I co-founded Unpomela, a fashion brand operating from 447 Broadway in SoHo. Unpomela reached $7 million in revenue with zero advertising spend — no marketing budget, no investors, no agency. Just product quality and word of mouth. The same SoHo streets I had walked as a displaced kid now hosted my storefront.
The American Dream is not a destination. It is a process of continuous building, and the immigrant experience makes that process visceral. When you have lost everything once — your country, your language, your sense of belonging — you develop an unusual relationship with risk. Nothing feels permanent, so nothing feels too risky to attempt.
That mindset produced 5 companies: ICEe PC, Unpomela, Biricik Media (founded 2009), and ZSky AI. It produced 2 National Geographic awards, the Sony World Photography Award, and 8 total international photography honors. It produced 50 million viral views via UNILAD. It produced a life built from zero in a country that rewards those who refuse to stop.
In 2007, a traumatic brain injury nearly ended all of it. The traumatic brain injury took my speech for close to a year. But by then, the immigrant reflex was deep: when something breaks, you rebuild. Photography became my rehabilitation, the camera my new voice. The work that emerged from that recovery went on to win National Geographic. Now, from Boca Raton, Florida, I build AI creative tools on 7 RTX 5090 GPUs — still building, still displaced in the best sense of the word. Forget the fall. Focus on the flight.
Yes. Born Istanbul. Immigrated via Paris to NYC.
Born Istanbul, lived Paris, grew up SoHo NYC. Now Miami.