Parliamentary Elections of Armenia, 6 May, 2012.
The Ghost House
The “ghost house” in Abovyan city of Armenia is the shelter for the victims of two wars. The house was built by German prisoners after Second World War. Having served its time, the building was closed and forgotten. During the next war refugees from Karabakh settled here.
Okhoyan Mari and her poor family have illegaly taken up residence in an old factory building’s hotel In Yeghvard. There are eight children in Okhoyan’s family. Now they are being evicted.
Mari is twenty years old. She has two children from her second marriage.
During Armenia’s road to independence, which continues to this day, Armenia has seen many strange transformations. What interests me most is how old structures are being used today and how this might reflect upon the needs of the people and the state of the country.
The Yezidis are a Kurdish-dialect speaking people without a country, many of whom have made Armenia their home. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of them, just like many Armenians, have chosen to leave the country in search for a better life in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere.
Bagaran and Halikisla are the closest villages on the Turkish-Armenian closed border. This is the longest closed border in history between two nations. Despite this fact, the people of both villages find ways to cooperate and maintain friendly relations.
On the evening of April 23, several thousand Armenians marched through the streets of Yerevan to the Tsitsarnakaberd, memorial dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, carrying torches, flowers, candles and flags to commemorate the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. The following day, leaders of the Armenian church, political leaders, military leaders and several thousand Yerevan residents again visited the hilltop monument for a religious service to memorialize those who were killed.
Khtsabert is a small remote village in Nagorno-Karabakh, a country that is internationally unrecognized. This is a story about the broken structures where the people of the village continue to live and the memory, that is also unrecognized, of the people they have lost.
During Soviet times, a railway was built through the village of Haghartsin in Armenia. To build the railway stone was blasted and the natural landscape was destroyed. Years later, the ground collapsed and the river changed course flooding homes, killing animals and destroying gardens. Most families fled. One man, Hayk Hakobyan, distraught at the loss of his home, died of a heart attack.