In Remembrance: Sedat Pakay ’68MFA Died on August 20 2016

Sedat Pakay, photographer and filmmaker, died unexpectedly on Saturday, August 20, 2016. 

Born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1945, he was a graduate of Robert College in Istanbul. His photographs have been widely exhibited and published internationally since 1964. He studied with the legendary photographer Walker Evans at the Yale School of Art, where he received his MFA degree in 1968. In the late Sixties, two of his photographs were accepted to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and one of his photographs, a portrait of author James Baldwin, was exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum in 1969 and was later included in the Museum's collection.

After graduation, he freelanced in New York City and photographed for magazines such as Holiday, New York, and Esquire. Since 1967, he has had an ongoing project of doing portraits of well-known artists in various disciplines. During the last two decades, along with his photographic work, he produced numerous commercial and documentary films. Two of his documentaries, about Walker Evans and Josef Albers, were broadcast nationally on PBS.

He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Kathleen Pakay, his son Timur, daughter-in-law Stephanie, grandson Oliver, two sisters, Ayse and Nilay, and many nephews and nieces. 

For more information, visit https://sedatpakay.com.

—Submitted by the family.