PHOTOGRAPHY

nazif topçuoglu
in search of time not yet lost

Lithe, literary and rebellious, the women of Nazif Topçuoğlu’s photographs may not be real but they are the way he wants women to exist. Typically depicted in groups, Topçuoğlu’s subjects find strength in numbers; and in the virtual absence of men, there is little to restrain them. They are idealised women, his imaginary sisters and girlfriends.

This perspective is bound in Topçuoğlu’s romanticised 1960s view of a secular Turkish idyll. He celebrates a golden childhood, simultaneously lamenting the passage of time since then and borrowing heavily from his own experiences. Growing up in Ankara, the Turkish Republican capital, Topçuoğlu was surrounded by liberal women. His father died when he was eight years-old and he was raised by his mother, one of Turkey’s first female law professors, and by his many aunts and grandmother. His childhood home was often filled with his mother’s colleagues and students, who provided the templates for the women who now form the central characters in his photographs: free, bookish and feminine. “I didn’t have any male role models. I always had an affinity with females,” says Topçuoğlu.

An early series, Readers, establishes Topçuoğlu’s thoughts about women. A clear reference to the ones he....