11 Photos That Will Redefine the Way You Look at Horse Photography

Born in Gronau, Germany to Turkish parents, Yalvac grew up obsessed with photography and horses. “When I was a kid, I could stand for hours in front of a picture and cry for years for my mother to bring me ride. I was raised in a huge family where everyone was an artist and had a skill to do something. Painting, singing, dancing.”

At 16, she started printing others’ photos in a darkroom, then forayed into printing her own work. “I began to take pictures with just one fact in mind: they had to be worthy to print out.”

Photographing horses didn’t come until college. Yalvac started as a photographer in motorsport, then took a job as a writer/photographer for an equestrian magazine during her final year at school. Within three years, she was travelling the world to shoot horses exclusively.

“I’m always looking for a little bit of magic in my photos and always try to give the feeling of what I’m photographing, whether it is free or ridden horses, in any discipline. I want to get people who don’t deal with horses to fall in love with them.”

Today, Yalvac lives in Milan, Italy, where she works as a commission artist.

“I have my favorite photographers, which I use as inspiration and that absolutely don’t belong to the equestrian world. Fashion photographers, war photographers, portrait masters…mainly. And in the end, horses are like people. They have emotions. They can be dressed wonderfully and have infinite expressions. They belong to different cultures and every culture uses them in a different way. So I just try to mix what I learn from the masters of photography with what I do,” explains Yalvac.

“Normally, horse photography is an editorial photography and I just wanted to change that. Horse photography can be anything—it can be a reportage, it can be glamour, it can be portrait. And they are all about emotions, horse riding is all about emotions. And that is exactly what I consider when I work with them. I have to pass these emotions to the audience.”