Turkish Oil Wrestling is gripping by design. Lawrence Grecco photographed the Kirkpinar tournaments of 1996, 1997 and 1998. The resulting series of pictures were published by Apollon Press in 2004, under the title Turkish Wrestling. We were curious about the process and he was kind enough to share the details.

“The way their golden skin glistens under the hot sun is quite beautiful,” he says, “and the leather trousers they wear haven’t changed at all over the course of the six centuries that this event has gone on.” Lawrence loves the fluidity of the action, the constant grasping and flowing motion of the wrestlers’ arms and torsos. The Long Island photographer has been a wrestler since he was a very young man. He first heard about Kirkpinar in 1992. “I think the Turkish style of wrestling is the most exotic and interesting form of the sport I’ve ever seen anywhere,” he says.

Grecco had press credentials issued by the Turkish consulate. The Kirkpinar wrestlers were all very friendly and seemed to like the attention they got from him. During his third year in Turkey, he found quite a few of the wrestlers he had photographed the previous years and gave them prints of themselves. They were very grateful for that.

“When I was taking the photographs, most of the time I just stayed on the sidelines, out of their way, and used a telephoto lens, so they could just be themselves and not feel overly self-conscious,” he explains. “A few of them could tell that I am also a wrestler. They would ask me if I would wrestle with them, but logistically it just didn’t make sense. The olive oil they use combined with my clothing and camera equipment just wouldn’t mix together well, and the style of wrestling I do is very different from theirs. I’ve always done submission style which is very different from the Turkish style. But I thought that oil wrestling was fascinating from the moment I first saw it.”

So say we all.

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