Rebecca Topakian

Born in 1989 in Saint Mandé. Lives and works in Paris. 
Graduated from the National Photography School of Arles in 2015.

Playing on the boundaries between documentary and visual forms, his work seeks to capture the possibility of representing personal identity in its relationship to the group, community or collective history through a sensual approach. 
For Lady Gulizar and Other Love StoriesRebecca Topakian's starting point is the unique story of her Armenian family, who lived in Turkey before her grandfather emigrated to France. The love of his great-grandparents - Garabed and Gulizar - forbidden by their parents, until the removal of Gulizar by Garabed, came looking for her on his horse. This almost mythological account brought her to Armenia, where she confronts a romantic and fictional vision of the motherland with a very contemporary image of Armenia. Landscapes like portraits of Armenian men speak of desire: that of a modern Gulizar who, rather than kidnapped by his lover, becomes a desperate subject in the context of a patriarchal society; but also a desire for identity, which is expressed in the search for typical and familiar traits. By borrowing from different photographic registers - snapshot, documentary, studio portrait or intimacy photography - that she mixes in a constellar hanging with family photos that she drew on local stones picked up during her strolls, she offers an intimate and impressionistic portrait of Armenia today.