Murat Bay was born in Urfa, Turkey in 1984. He completed his primary and secondary education in Urfa, then he went to Bursa to study physics.
In 2008 he started to take photos and afterwards he followed street demonstrations with his camera. While studying in Bursa, between 2010 and 2011 he worked at Birgün newspaper as a voluntary reporter.
In 2013 Bay settled down in Istanbul and he continued to record Turkey’s recent history as a freelance photographer in the period that social opposition was rising in the streets. After Gezi uprising he came across with sendika.org and he became a voluntary worker for them.
In September 2014 he went to Syria border in order to follow the conflict that started when ISIS surrounded Kobane. He spent 5 months there and documented the historical resistance through instantaneous news, photographs, videos, interviews and commentary articles that he sent to sendika.org. The photographs that he took in this period were exhibited in Italy in partnership with Awakening photography collective. Also he was rewarded “Halkın Hakları Basın Ödülü” due to his workings there.
In 2015 he settled down in Diyarbakır for 1 year and he followed the conflict between Kurdish rebellious and Turkish army that took place in many Kurdish settlements. In this period, in border lines and conflict zones he worked as fixer for TV channels and media organs.
In 2016, he followed Mosul war which is ISIS’s capital in Iraq. Here he worked as director of photography for the Mosul (Iraq) and Yüksekova (Turkey) shootings for the documentary “Human Flow” which was directed by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
In 2017 he returned to Istanbul in order to follow presidential referendum which was a turning point for Turkey. He followed street actions, “Justice walking” and “Yüksel resistance” which were the artifacts of this period and that attained international attention.
In the first month of 2018 he went to Antarctica which is the only continent in the world without possession and there he observed Colonialism, the borders which were not drawn yet, political tension between states and climate change.
His works were published in reputable media organs.
Murat Bay speaks Turkish and English in advance level besides his mother language Kurdish. Recently he continues to work as journalist, photo reporter and documentarist around Middle East, Turkey and Europe.