Elif Koyutürk is a filmmaker, photographer, and all-around artist originally from Istanbul, now based in Bend, Oregon. Elif works across many mediums—photography, poetry, film, and more—but the throughline in everything she does is a drive to make people feel a story, not just read the facts of it. She brings a rare kind of power and passion to her work, and it’s clear that her connection to land and place isn’t just a subject for her, it’s personal.
Like so many fascinating people I talk to on this podcast, her path wasn’t a straight line. She grew up between the massive city of Istanbul and her family’s farm, raised by journalist parents and a house full of grandmothers steeped in Anatolian tradition. She taught herself photography using a camera with a moldy, secondhand 23-euro lens and won international awards with it before she ever touched professional, high-dollar gear. From there she talked her way onto a Red Bull film crew in a hotel lobby, worked in Austria, and eventually landed in Los Angeles with one suitcase and no contacts, on an “Extraordinary Ability” visa.
In this conversation, we get into all of it—her childhood in Istanbul, her creative process and her synesthesia, and how she built a career from nothing through sheer resourcefulness and energy. We also spend a lot of time on her new film, Guardians of Anatolia, which premiered at Telluride Mountainfilm and follows a female-led nomadic tribe in Turkey’s Taurus Mountains as they fight to hold onto a 9,000-year-old matriarchal way of life against modern water and land pressures.
I hope you enjoy this one, as it hits on so many of the topics I enjoy– art, conservation, agriculture, creativity, and hard work– but with an international perspective that is now rooted here in the West.
Photos courtesy of Elif Koyutürk
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Topics Discussed:
- 0:00 – Introducing Elif Koyutürk
- 2:49 – Early Elif
- 7:36 – Artistic inclinations
- 11:33 – To the U.S.
- 18:34 – Off the plane in L.A.
- 22:20 – Making money
- 24:57 – Connections to friendships
- 28:50 – Being raw and clumsy
- 30:49 – Guardians of Anatolia origin story
- 37:49 – A vanishing way of life
- 40:23 – Emerging filmmaker
- 43:40 – Path forward for the film
- 45:54 – What’s next
- 51:39 – Old Salt takeaways
- 57:15 – Plot twist: jiu jitsu!
- 1:02:52 – Rivers in Bend, OR
- 1:05:35 – Book recs
- 1:08:16 – Wrapping up
Information Referenced:
- Elif Koyutürk
- Guardians of Anatolia
- Elif’s Instagram
- A Q&A with Elif on Motoron about her career and shooting TransAntonia
- Nick Offerman on M&P
- Mountainfilm Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship
- Old Salt Festival
- Past Ed convos at Old Salt
- Eduardo Garcia, chef at Old Salt
- Elif in the Bend rivers
- Book recs: Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull,The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas, Alan Lightmen’s Mr. g
Enjoy this episode? Then you might like these too:
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- Hillary Rosner – Why Wildlife Needs Room to Roam
- Stella Maria Baer – Moons, Horses, and New Mexico Light
- Kelsey Morris Returns – Going All In on Art
- Yvon Chouinard – The Perpetual Pursuit of Simplicity
- Helen Rebanks – “The Farmer’s Wife” – Live at the Old Salt Festival
- Sara Domek – The Science and Story of Wyoming’s Wildlife Migration
Visit the podcast page for a full list of episodes where you can filter episodes by topic and guests’ vocations.
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