Survivors

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. Rather than re-constructing the unimaginable image of the genocide, Armenakyan’s project revives – through the viewer’s participation – the very image that the genocide attempted to obliterate. House interiors with old photos, everyday objects, and family members. These ordinary things make us who we are and constitute our sense of humanity. This is also what we normally take for granted and Armenakyan’s project reveals its preciousness and the tragedy of its loss. The photographs in ‘Survivors’ are not a memento mori, but a form of storytelling. They turn us into witnesses who must, a hundred years later, see, listen and find some form of redemption by giving these victims back the dignity of individual identity that was once erased. These portraits show faces that had seen the unimaginable. Like relics, they remind us of our responsibility to preserve the memory of that which should never be repeated.