Nazik Armenakyan’s documentary photography project.
Ten years in the making, 'Survivors' is an ambitious photographic narrative about surviving victims of the Armenian genocide, which includes portraits, interior scenes, witness testimonies and archival photographs. The project shows the significance of photography in forging an understanding of 1915 and its impact on individual identities.
The eponymous photo book published in 2015, encompassing over forty duotone and color photographs and thirty-five firsthand testimonials published here for the first time, summarizes the project. Noted French-Armenian philosopher and literary critic Marc Nichanian, has authored an extensive introduction, which expounds upon the issues of representing and perceiving the experiences of the survivors. The editor of the book, art-historian and photography curator Vigen Galstyan, looks at Armenakyan’s photographs as a dialectical platform between the aftermath of the Catastrophe and the present. With its design and conceptual framework, ‘Survivors’ is not merely a collation of images and witness accounts, but a form of narration and an art object in its own right. It transcends the edges of the photograph’s visual field, becoming a means for analyzing, unearthing and relating the past.
The book is available here http://booksfromarmenia.com/item.php?item_id=1290&cur=USD