Dame Gulizar and other Love Stories

Once upon a time, in faraway Constantinople, there was Hadji Garabet Kevork Topakian, a renowned and respected basturma producer, considered by many as the best in town. Garabet led a solitary life until the day when He fell deeply in love with the young and beautiful Gulizar, who, to his great joy, returned the favor. They made a lovely couple. Unfortunately, Their love is thwarted by Gulizar's parents, for whom Garabet is too boorish. Unable to resign himself to the loss of his beloved, he sneaked into horse to his bedroom window on a freezing night. Without hesitation For a long time, Gulizar threw himself into the arms of his lover and they left together to Constantinople to marry and live happily ever after. The distant Ararat, illuminated by the moon, was the only witness to this abduction... For Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories, Rebecca Topakian starts from the unique story of his Armenian family, who lived in Türkiye before his grandfather does not emigrate to France. This story is about the love of his great-grandparents - Garabed and Gulizar. Topakian explored this part of his identity by choosing fiction and mythology. Keeping in mind the love story of her ancestors while she was traveling and living in Armenia, desire has become the common thread of this project: a desire for earth, for soil, of identity, but also of the body of the other which acts almost like a mirror. The book includes his own photos mixed with his family's archives, establishing a link between the past and the present. Printed photographs on transparent paper symbolically refer to his great-grandparents their homeland, offering an intimate and impressionistic portrait of Armenia.