By Sophie Holloway
The first of its kind, Yerevan’s photography festival is now in its final week, after nearly a month of workshops, a competition and numerous exhibits across the city. The collections of traditional, largely historical photography at The National Gallery, on display until 28 November, showcase over a century of images from across Armenia and Georgia, from pre-Soviet to the modern day.
Karén Mirzoyan, the festival’s curator, says the project is in its early stages. “We want to show people that photography is something more than they think,” he says, “not just Instagram posts or pictures in albums, but more about storytelling.”
‘Hakob Hekekyan’s Yerevan: A Photo Poem’ is one of the festival’s collections. Curated by art historian Vigen Galstyan, it is a distillation of Soviet-era photography from the 1950s-1970s. “His work is symptomatic of the era,” says Galstyan. “[It] really embodies the stylistic or thematic direction local photography was moving in.”
Born in 1923, Hekekyan’s prolific work was featured in exhibitions, periodicals and books,including the first photobook published in Armenia in 1960. He also produced experimental photography, none of which was ever exhibited.
“Of course, the current exhibition presents only a small part of his output, and practice,” says Galstyan. “This is just one layer of his oeuvre.”
Hekekyan’s photographs of civilian life in Yerevan emanate warmth and intimacy; a glittering, utopian vision of the city in the mid-20th century. “This group of photographs is above and beyond a story about a city that becomes an emblem,” says Galstyan, “a representative symbol of a nation that is reborn after decades of trauma and eradication due to genocides, revolution.” In most of his images, the emphasis is people: those who build the city, innovate, design, create.
Other collections include the works of Georgian photographer Shalva Alkhanaidze (1927-1978), featuring a selection of Soviet era images assembled by Georgian curator, Nasten Nijaradze. Bucolic scenes of Georgians feasting and dancing in the Tusheti mountains transport the viewer to a distant, bygone age. Alkhanaidze’s series of passport photos – 20 portraits of locals taken from 1960-975 – offers a rare and poignant moment of contact with the lost faces of the past.
‘Under the Shadow of a Veiled Mountain’ is another collection, but its images were produced and curated by German photographer, Patrick Biernet. The exhibit is a meditation on memory and its fragility; on the Armenian landscape and the connection between people and their environment. “I thought it would be popular bringing him to this exhibition,” says Mirzoyan. “It’s a mix of documentary and more artistic, contemporary photography, with a little bit of fashion. It works – the people really like this series.”
‘The Chronicles of Armenia’, one of the larger collections, gathers together photographs of notable Magnum photographers who documented life in Armenia from the late 19th century to the present day. The photographs pinpoint to critical moments in the country’s past, including Armenia’s fight for self-determination and independence from Russia, the earthquake of 1988, and the Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Together, the exhibits form a dialogue about national identity, memory and the collective struggle against adversity. While this year’s festival has been on a smaller-scale and with an emphasis on traditional, historical photography, Mirzoyan says he has bigger plans for next year’s festival.
“Next time, there will be more young people [involved] and experimental photography, not in the gallery but in the streets,” he says. “I don’t particularly like traditional exhibitions – it’s new photography and new narratives that I prefer.”
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