Rebecca Topakian: Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories

Rebecca Topakian: Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories by Michael HoneggerNovember 1, 2024

Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories_cover2

©Rebecca Topakian, Cover of Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories

No one can resist a love story especially when it concerns family members who have overcome major obstacles and have experienced outlandish adventures in pursuit of romance and marriage. This is the initial premise of Rebecca Topakian’s exploration of her family roots in Armenia in her monograph, “Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories“. Dame Gulizar is Topakian’s great-grandmother who was not a Dame as this tale begins, but rather the love interest of her great-grandfather, Garabed. Unfortunately for Garabed, he was not deemed an appropriate match for Gulizar by her Armenian parents living in Turkey. Garabed takes matters into his own hands and kidnaps Gulizar and whisks her away to Constantinople on horseback where he marries her. The family eventually is forced to emigrate to France where Gulizar attains Dame status for her acquiescence to romance. But this is just the beginning. of Topakian’s journey through family archives and her own exploration of Armenia and her Armenian identity.

Haig Topakian as a young man doing his military service. Printed

©Rebecca Topakian, Haig Topakian as a young man doing his military service. from Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories

There is a certain level of mystery that unfolds as one pages through this beautifully designed volume filled with bold Armenian landscapes in juxtaposition to intimate portraits of swarthy Armenian men. One gets the impression that Topakian is on the lookout for a Garabed figure of her own to guide her through the wondrous topography of contemporary Armenia in search of her own mythology. An underlying contemporary sexual tension pervades the book and appears to reference indirectly the plight of her great-grandmother. Her family’s roots in Armenia are never far from the visual narrative.

©Rebecca Topakian, Haig as a young man, printed on glass from lake sevan from Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories

As Topakian explains, “Armenians have a deep connection to their lands, mountains, and rocks…. As I wandered through Armenia, I felt a strong urge to collect stones along the way. These were pieces of black, red, and brown obsidian, tuf, and this mysterious blue stone that fishermen around Lake Sevan sell to tourists as precious moonstones—though they’re likely just remnants of glass from an old Soviet factory. I decided to incorporate these stones into my work, printing my family photos onto them. It was a very naive artistic gesture: put my ancestors back on a land where they belonged. The process of printing in the darkroom, using liquid emulsion, was as earthy as any analog method. They say analog photography is an imprint of reality. Here I was, taking the tiny silver halides that once captured the light reflecting off my great-grandmother onto paper, and using them to illuminate new silver halides, imprinting the light of Gulizar—this time on Armenian obsidian.