Tuğrul Çakar

Born in Sakarya in 1946, Tuğrul Çakar graduated from the Ankara Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences. He encountered photography in 1978. Between 1981 and 1985, he served on the executive, publication, and advisory boards of the Ankara Photography Artists Association (AFSAD). From 1980 to 1993, he worked as a photographer at the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. Çakar passed away in 2017.

Çakar’s photographic practice blends documentary sensibility with an alternative aesthetic pursuit. Scenes in which human conditions, spatial-temporal relationships, and archaeological traces intersect with contemporary life stand at the center of his work. In his black-and-white and hand-colored photographs, as well as in his long-exposure pinhole camera experiments, narrative and visual memory intertwine.

His first solo exhibition, opened in London in 1985, was shown at various universities for two years and was later exhibited again in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir. He continued his production with his photographic albums Suya Çağrı (1990), Fırat’ı Beklerken (1992), Cam Evlerin Kadınları (2004), İğne Deliği Fotoğrafları (2010), and İnsanlık Halleri (2016). Çakar compiled his photographic essays and stories in the books En Uzaktaki Gri (1993), Fotoğraf Yazıları (2015), and Denemeler (2016).