Şinasi Barutçu was born in 1906. He has been a dominant role model for the development in the education field of photography. His first encounter with the field has been in the Bediz Resne Photography House in his early ages. Following his graduation from İstanbul Muallim Mektebi, he began teaching as an art teacher in the same institute. He also continued his education at Fine Arts Academy at the same time. His deeper pursuit in photography has been in his post-graduate study period in Germany by 1928 when he also became a member of various photography clubs. On his way back to his homeland, he began to work as a founding professor in Gazi Education Institute. In this institution, he became the pioneer of photography education to be institutionalized in Turkey, to prepare educative books of the field, and to establish the penetration of amateur photography courses in different cities of the country.
Refik Akyüz and Serdar Darendeliler mention on Barutçu's photography career, and his production as follows: In fact, taking a general look at Barutçu’s photographs, it is possible to say that what stands out is an interest in beautiful and aesthetic subjects in line with the spirit of amateur photography and technical matters such as adherence to classical composition rules and a wealth of tone, rather than content. Elements we could just as well describe as romantic, such as reverse light, reflections, the presence of clouds creating dramatic effect bring Barutçu’s photography into the territory of Pictorialism. Even though Pictorialism had given way to different approaches by the time Barutçu started working actively, what we see in Barutçu – as is still common in amateur photography today – is the never-ending desire to capture an aesthetics and beauty. However, taking into account his photograms indicating his interest in experimentation or his graphically oriented close-ups, it would be equally possible to place him amongst the period’s Dadaist or Constructivist artists.
