Conversations with Myself by Nazik Armenakyan

In this photo essay, Nazik Armenakyan discusses the rise of female photographers in Armenia, her own career path and positionality, the ethics of shooting vulnerable subjects, and the freedom to follow her intuition. Translated by Ani Jilavyan and commissioned in tandem with Wasafiri 120: Armenia(n)s – Elevation.

In 2001, when I started practising photography in Armenia, photographers were expected to be middle-aged men, not young women. Unlike the men, for several years I had to constantly prove that I, too, could do the same job, travel, and get photographs to editors on time, while also raising a family.

Photojournalist Ruben Mangasaryan was one of the first to create opportunities for aspiring women photographers; from 2004–2006, he ran photojournalism courses at Yerevan’s Caucasus Media Institute, in collaboration with the World Press Photo foundation, which I attended. In my first year, there were only three other women in my class. The next year, there were two men, while the rest were women. Thanks to these courses, a new generation of women photographers developed in Armenia, who continue to actively practise documentary photography today, focusing on social issues and human rights.

Being a female photographer, rather than being a problem, is sometimes a big advantage, as there are certain topics with which the trust you can gain as a woman is not as accessible to men. If you do the job with respect and enough attention, a person will let you into their house and allow you to photograph them. It’s very important to think beyond taking a photo as the process of photography is about creating relationships; so people should know who their photographer is and why they want to take their photo. If you put human connection into the heart of the work, suspicions vanish and opportunities open up — opportunities to photograph. Ultimately, photography is a powerful tool that can be used to bring social change.

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I am almost a self-taught photographer. Before photography, I was a self-taught painter and really wanted to become a fashion designer. Then in high school, my father gave me a Zenit camera and I started photographing my family members, our neighbours, and my friends. Taking photos with film was magical. So, I switched from painting to photography.

My photographic style is the language of my thinking and seeing. From the very beginning, portraiture was one of my favourite genres. Not much has changed since I saw my first memorable images, aged six or seven years old. I still see things the same way, but now I can photograph what I see. I love simple compositions, where the subject is in the centre and looking directly at the viewer. Digital or film, colour or black and white — everything depends on the project or photograph’s topic. The means emerges in the process. Nowadays, I shoot almost all my projects on film.

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I began to research. I found HIV/AIDS support organisations. I started attending meetings at Real World, Real People, a Yerevan-based NGO. There, I met and interviewed many HIV/AIDS-infected women. But for a long time, I couldn’t find a way to introduce this topic in my photographs. On the one hand, I was affected by and truly wanted to speak up about it. On the other hand, for the first time, I encountered a certain problem: I was unable to take any photos. Though women living with HIV trusted me and told me their personal stories, they didn’t want to be recognised. All of them had families and relatives with no idea about their HIV status; moreover, in Armenian society it’s near-impossible to live with this particular stigma.

Desperation brought me to a creative deadlock and I decided to abandon the subject. But it kept on bothering me.

In 2019, an idea came to mind — I should use my limitations. Studying the personal stories of Armenian women living with HIV, I realized that a potential project wouldn’t only be about the issue of HIV. Woven into this complex subject were other delicate, deep, and painful themes, such as the role of women in Armenian society, education and parenting, manifestations and perceptions of violence, and, finally, shame.

I decided to photograph the women in a space that was not theirs, limiting myself to just twelve shots taken with a medium format Hasselblad camera. I further decided to cover their faces with veils and fabrics, the same way all the problems in their stories stayed hidden. This was agreed upon with the women beforehand; it was important for me that they were active participants in the process.

In parallel with portraits, I also started creating still lifes which reflected the women’s silent stories, sometimes to highlight certain traditions and their continuous influences on them. Here, I gave myself full freedom and used my intuition, turning objects connected to the theme into symbols. This was my first project where everything was staged, contrary to the approach I used for many years as a documentary photographer.

After the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, the responsibility and importance of being and working in Armenia increased even more for me. I have no special knowledge or methods. But I realised I just love my country and its people, and I can never stop examining them, their stories, culture, customs, and ways of living. Through many years of practice, I have now developed my own stance on photography which helps me to express my individuality — to always prioritise the story when starting a project, and to examine a story that necessarily touches and resonates with me, so that over time, solutions can emerge in the images. 

The camera is only an excuse to enter people’s lives and go beyond the surface to form deeper connections. One’s own positionality only forms when one can understand the subject, which would, of course, be impossible without intuition. This is why it is important how and what I choose to photograph. There is a big responsibility — delicate ethical questions, such as how exactly to depict someone or something in an image.

In documentary photography and photojournalism, one should always provide appropriate context. I always write, because my work is not just limited to taking photographs. Research, conducting interviews, and adding accompanying information to photographs makes the material even more solid. Captions and titles for images are vital as they help the viewer to return to photos, look longer, understand the story, and see finer details which could have gone undetected.

In 2003, I started working at Armenpress, Armenia’s main state news agency. The Armenpress experience was a difficult but amazing one, where I learned to make decisions and act quickly in varied situations. But over the years, from time to time, I asked myself: who am I and what do I actually want to do with photography? These periods of self-reflection weren’t easy but they definitely enabled my transformation from one kind of photographer into another.

After rapid response times and being in a constant alert state at Armenpress, I no longer wanted to continue doing photojournalism — I needed time. There were certain topics and events that interested me, and I wanted to return to them. This is how I began doing documentary projects, particularly enjoying long-term ones, where the themes I chose to work on undoubtedly shaped me as a photographer.

From 2005, I worked on my ‘Survivors’ project for the next ten years, a photographic narrative about surviving victims of the Armenian genocide. The series includes portraits, interior scenes, witness testimonies, and archival images, showing photography’s significance in forging an understanding of 1915 and its impact on individual identities. For this project, visiting the elderly was especially challenging, as I didn’t always have exact contact details to verify survivors' addresses or to even check if they were still alive. Sometimes I’d go from village to village, only to find out that the people had already died.

Once, during yet another round of searching for a particular survivor, in the moment I found the house and was contemplating going in, a car stopped in front of me. Some people took a coffin out of the car… I approached them to ask who the deceased was. It was Ashkhen Avetisyan, the survivor I had been looking for.

I hurried back into my car and told the driver to turn around. I couldn't control my emotions; it brought home to me the fact that the survivors were dying. I was crushed. Midway back, an idea came to me: I had photographed elderly people who had lived for so long after such cruel events, as if waiting for something. Maybe I could also photograph them in their death…

So, I went in and introduced my project idea to Ashkhen Avetisyan’s sons and they told me their mother’s story, allowing me to photograph her. I took the first image. In the centre of the room lay Ashkhen’s body; behind their mother stood her sons.

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Interest in photography, especially analogue photography, has been increasing in Armenia. Women photographers are active and work in almost all genres. But there is no institutional, systemic education for photography in Armenia. There are many young people who show interest and engage with photography, but they don’t go further in their photographic careers — I see no professional consistency.

Besides basic training, there are many other issues. For example, while there are photography websites and libraries, there are no galleries or museums which, along with hosting exhibitions, would also be able to take care of Armenian photography archives. Many photographers’ archives remain solely with their families, inaccessible to researchers or wider society. This is probably the number one problem.

Today, the role of social media has become crucial. It is an amazing tool for self-publishing — if managed in a considered and consistent way, of course. For example, a personal Instagram page could become a professional portfolio. Now, many editors and curators find photographers in different countries through social media. But social media presence doesn't necessarily mean one is a good photographer.

Fundamentally developing the photography field in Armenia would require a lot of investment and effort. Having personally encountered these problems in the field, in 2012, a group of women photographers, including myself, founded the documentary photography centre 4Plus. For thirteen years, we have been promoting documentary photography in Armenia. Our website, launched in 2017, is the only online platform for visual stories in the country. Two years ago, we also started Patker (‘Image’), a school offering visual literacy training. We’ve further set up a print lab for printing high-quality photographs, and also offer professional consultation. These are small but important steps towards both the development of the photography field in Armenia and the fostering of a more informed environment.

Translated from the Eastern Armenian by Ani Jilavyan