With Witch, Dilara Findikoglu and Harley Weir Rewrite Women’s History

It is the season of the witch, which makes it the perfect time for photographer Harley Weir and designer Dilara Findikoglu to release Witch, a photo book that brings together powerful women and real witches in an exploration of the relationship between femininity, nature, spirituality, and rebellion.

“This zine is a celebration of women: the complicated, the powerful, the unruly, the tender, the strange, and the unapologetic,” Weir said in a statement.

In order to complete the project, Weir and Findikoglu traveled to eight cities and villages across Romania in just five days. This endeavor into Eastern Europe “felt strangely familiar” to Findikoglu, who is Turkish. “There was something beautiful about the land and its people, and a sense that the ancient knowledge and traditions we had come to explore were still very much alive,” she said.

At each stop, the photographer and designer found themselves in discussion with a variety of women, both real witches and those who use their sense of self and feminine power for good. The result is a book of photographs and interviews that tells a generational story of the evolution of witchcraft and womanhood today.

“For centuries, the witch has been used as a symbol of evil,” Weir said. “But maybe she was never scary because she was evil, maybe she was scary because she was free. Across history, women who were outspoken, independent, sexual, knowledgeable, or simply unwilling to conform have been treated as dangerous. The witch became a name for the woman who could not, or would not, be controlled.”

The historical misinterpretation of witchcraft sits at the center of the book. Witch attempts to reclaim the narrative, shifting the perspective on women who challenge social expectations. At the forefront of this group is real-life witch, Mihaela Minca, and her daughters. “In them, the witch is not a myth but a lived reality, a way of being rooted in nature, tradition, and feminine knowledge outside institutional power,” Weir said.

Minca, as well as the other women featured in Witch, are dressed in Findikoglu’s designs. The wardrobe standout is undoubtedly a cherry-adorned corseted dress, stained with juices that the more macabre-minded could read as blood. Findikoglu’s feminine, defiant clothing fit perfectly into the story of Witch, and Tudor-like details conjure up a time when these women were once persecuted. A sheer dress embodies the feeling of womanly freedom, while a coat of hair exemplifies the wild nature of a rebellious spirit.

“Dilara Findikoglu’s clothes become part of this story,” Weir said. “Her designs embrace femininity without making it obedient. The body as a place of rebellion, desire, and self-expression. The clothes feel protective and provocative at once, allowing these women to inhabit the witch not as a caricature of evil, but as a symbol of power, freedom, and refusal.”

There are an array of perspectives at play within Witch—modernity and ancient traditions, young versus old, authenticity and artifice—that mirror the varied nature of the women depicted: no matter what, power is “deeply rooted in our body,” according to Findikoglu. “Through this book, we wanted to explore and celebrate the beauty of this often-overlooked wisdom, to question the boundaries between the rational and the unseen, and to recognize the power that exists beyond what we have been taught to understand as truth.”