Harley Weir’s expansive, powerful vision of modern-day witches

Throughout history, the stories of Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and countless other cautionary fairy tales have done much to make witches feared and loathed. Enter acclaimed photographer Harley Weir and designer Dilara Findikoglu’s Witch. Inspired by their art director Matthew Scrote’s childhood memories of Romania, a place filled with mysticism and intrigue, Weir and Findikoglu wanted to know more. Over five days, across eight Romanian cities and villages, they wanted to speak to everyone and anyone they stumbled across — including Mihaela Minca, matriarch of Europe’s most powerful clan of witches, and her daughters who together practice magic (black and white) as their day job. 

Weir and Findikoglu had little experience with witchcraft. Without wishing to entrench the negative, pantomime-esque trope, Witch is populated by a diverse coven of Romanian women dressed by Findikoglu in her contorting creations, shot through Weir’s fiercely feminine photographic lens, and interviewed by the duo. The result is a photographic epic that upturns ‘witch’ as a derogatory term and presents an expansive, potent vision of womanhood.

Dazed sat down with Weir and Findikoglu over Zoom, our talk peppered by background gurgles from Weir’s new baby while Findikoglu, joining from her studio, punctuated the conversation with the occasional Vogue cigarette. Below, they discuss the “charged” atmosphere of the Romanian countryside, their collaborative partnership, and how the idea of witchcraft has been used to demonise women.

There are lots of preconceived ideas surrounding witchcraft,  but what do you understand by the idea of a witch and of witchcraft? 

Harley Weir: I’m interested in the witch being in every woman. It’s about the lineage of female knowledge, and witchcraft obviously comes into that.  

Dilara Findikoglu: I agree with you. I don’t see a witch as a person with special powers who brews potions and casts spells, et cetera. Witchcraft is the knowledge that we all carry inside of us and the term ‘witch’ has been used to demonise women who connected to this knowledge. I feel like now there’s a sense of awakening; we are remembering these attributes, which is really exciting, actually. We’re remembering who we are, that we have our own freedom, our own potential inside us. 

How would you describe your relationship as collaborators?

HW: Well, there was a big moment when Dilara made and designed my wedding dress. What’s actually hilarious is that people would come up to me and they would completely forget that I got married, and they would congratulate me on the dress!  

DF: It started when you walked in my show Venus from Chaos; we didn’t know each other before that. Then, when we started working on the dress, I started understanding Harley’s soul, how she’s so different from lots of people. She lives and breathes her world, and I am someone like that too. We really connect in that way.  

HW: Dilara’s clothes embrace the woman without making her obedient! She loves what she does, and passion is so important to me. I’ve always been such a huge fan of her work. Before the wedding, maybe a few years, I had a folder on my phone called ‘Wedding’, and it had one picture, and it was a picture of one of Dilara’s dresses. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to wear when I find my true love.’

DF: Maybe you manifested it, like witchcraft… 

HW: When I walked in Dilara’s show, I had just met the love of my life and it was all very magical. It’s nice the way the world works like that – the coincidence. I think they call it a ‘wink from God’. 

“Witchcraft is the knowledge that we all carry inside of us and the term ‘witch’ has been used to demonise women who connected to this knowledge” – Dilara Findikoglu

Could you share some memories from the shoot?  

HW: The trip to Romania for Witch was super magical. Again, there were winks from God in there. Romania has a fascinating relationship with witchcraft as it’s one of the few places in Europe that has managed to mingle witchcraft with religion. You could really feel it, there was something alive…  

DF: Alive is a good word. The land was so charged. And watching Harley using her cameras like guns… I’ve never seen a photographer like that. Watching Harley pregnant, in the Romanian countryside, climbing up the mountains and going into the weirdest spots before everybody else – it was really, really inspiring. One of the ladies we met showed us her room of old clothes that she had inherited from her grandmothers. All hand-embroidered and handmade ruffles, flowers; it was so beautiful. We used some real Romanian heritage and folk clothing for some of the styling. 

Tell us about the cherry dress. 

DF: Yeah, it’s my favourite image with the fire burning and the shepherd… It’s an insane shot. Traditionally, the cherry is a symbol of the innocent girl; the cherry is cute and conforming and naïve and innocent. And I wanted to create a dangerous cherry dress that represents the tension between strength and power, and naivety and softness. All the cherries were made by three different people: one person cast the cherries, one person made the cherries out of silicone, and someone else painted the cherries to look very realistic and then they were applied by my girl army in the studio. A lot of people thought they were real cherries, but the dress was stained with real cherries.

How did you go about casting the project?

HW: Romania has this unique history of witchcraft, but we wanted to explore something that goes beyond Romania: how, as women, we’ve been taught to hide parts of ourselves, not to take up too much space or make ourselves too big. We wanted to find women who challenged that idea; women who, at another point in history, might have been persecuted for refusing to conform. That’s where the casting ideas came in, starting with the figure of the witch, who has been portrayed across cultures as evil. We wanted to challenge that image and explore what happens when you see the witch as a woman who is powerful and unapologetically herself. 

[One of the models], Antonella, is a Roma trans activist. Her mother was a witch and she had an amazing story, which you can read in the back of the book. But she is amazingly powerful. She’s a sex worker and completely does her own thing. 

“As women, we’ve been taught to hide parts of ourselves, not to take up too much space or make ourselves too big. We wanted to find women who challenged that idea; women who, at another point in history, might have been persecuted for refusing to conform” – Harley Weir

How do you understand the relationship between nature and womanhood? How does that shape your practice? 

DF: Humans are not separated from nature. I don’t see it as a separate place where you go to spend time or discover. We have seen what masculine power has done in the world, which has been really difficult to watch. Recently, I have been thinking about how we can bring in more sensitive powers to create a different direction for the world. How can we connect to nature, connect to ourselves more? And will it be better if the feminine attributes become more powerful again? I don’t know the answer yet, but I think about this every day. 

HW: I’ve always been obsessed with nature. I live as a fairy in the woods at my house, with plants everywhere, and I‘m always in the garden. Planting a seed and watching it grow makes me feel the most alive. Pregnancy, too, has made me think more about women and the potential of the body. It’s amazing what the body can do, how it can create life and transform itself to make space for someone new. Going through that made me feel so close to the earth. Some of the things women’s bodies can do are truly magical. I feel that connection has been misunderstood and feared throughout history, when actually it’s something incredibly powerful. 

Harley, how does your photography push back against conformity? 

HW: I do conform in a way. I package my work with a beautiful ribbon, so that more people feel they can connect with it, and so it feels easier to approach. But really, it’s about the subject matter. For me, photography is about learning, and in my work I’m exploring serious ideas I’ve questioned myself, or am at least trying to understand. I’ve definitely had people tell me not to do that, especially within fashion, because there’s this idea that beauty and seriousness don’t mix very well. Sometimes struggle with seeing something beautiful alongside something difficult, as if the beauty somehow takes away from the seriousness of the subject. But I don’t believe that. There’s beauty in everything, even in the saddest moments. Sometimes beauty allows you to approach something painful, to feel less alone in it, or to connect with an issue you might otherwise have found too difficult to look at. 

DF: The way you portray beauty is so singular. When you photograph women, you bring out the spirit. 

Witch is published by IDEA. Find out more and RSVP for the book launch here.