Erhan Arık’s Journey to the Stations of the Armenian Genocide and Beyond

Later, an Armenian friend in France, viewing the video, said that she must have been scared, when she said please send my love from me to Turkey, to the people you see over there. Arık however wondered whether it might also have been because, he said, “she knows very well I am a subject of this story. I am a subject of this memory, so she knows very well how much it is important that this door opens.”

Arık presented the video to the Project Save audience too, though it was a little hard to hear and understand. He said after the video that when he started his work, it was a personal journey because he felt that a great gap existed in the memory that he was living. As he opened more doors, the gap, instead of being filled, became deeper. The photos from Gayan were the first part of his project on the post-genocide period, he said.

Arık continued to show images, sometimes in silence and sometimes telling stories connected to the individuals depicted. Hagop Hagopian, for example, experienced the September 6-7, 1955 pogroms in Istanbul and moved to the Middle East in the 1960s. Though he missed Istanbul, he said that at the end of the day, at least nobody called him gavur [infidel] in his new home.

Arık visited several Armenian villages in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan, and took the picture of a leader of a small Armenian military group defending Havresk village from ISIS. In Jordan, he met a woman who showed him the scarf of her mother who said she was Armenian and this was the only thing left of her past. In Isfahan, Iran, he met a woman in a nursing home and took her picture holding the picture of her mother as a sort of family portrait.
In Lebanon, he met a family which kept letters of the woman’s father, Haroutioun. The father corresponded with a friend from Malatya, Turkey, and later they found another mutual friend, Krikor, who had moved to Armenia. Eventually, the friend in Turkey, Riza, realizes that only Haroutioun is writing to him while Krikor does not. He asks Haroutioun why Krikor does not write me any letters.

Arık concluded about this episode: “I think it is a very symbolic thing for me about this issue. When we understand as a society in Turkey why Krikor does not answer us, and when we feel that we are living without him, then maybe we can talk about the future.”

Reactions

Before questions were taken from the audience, Vaun commented about the powerful dialogue between past and present and asked Arık about the reaction to these photographs from various communities. Arık replied that he was not concerned about getting a wrong reaction in Lebanon, but more about getting some bad or wrong reactions in Turkey. He felt in fact that the Lebanese or Middle Eastern Armenians could not give a wrong reaction, while he was conducting his project.

In the Republic of Armenia, he said, people were at times suspicious, not only about the issues but also thinking that he could be a spy from Turkey. Telling his dream, however, seemed to get them to understand him.

He remarked that his method of photography took a lot of time. Whenever he met a person, he speaks with them and eventually gets their permission, but this could initially take anywhere from two to four hours. An article in the local Armenian newspaper however could speed this process up because after that, everyone would know about you.

In response to a follow-up question about whether people in Turkey understand his motivations, Arık replied that he was not sure whether most people in Turkey really care about what he is doing. He gave the example of a presentation he did in Istanbul several years ago for an organization. Most of the attendees were at a high intellectual level, he said, and made a lot of beautiful comments about his framing or composition of photographs and his methods of photographing, but one also continued, “but you are doing some kind of propaganda with your pictures, propaganda about the genocide, and you are trying to tell us that we should recognize the genocide.”

Arık said he tried to explain to this person: “I am not trying to persuade you with my pictures. I am not a historian. I am not a politician. I am just starting this journey for some inner way. I am just thinking of my journey, and this is just the result that I am showing you.”

Identity

A series of audience questions explored issues of identity in Arık’s native region of Ardahan. He said he did not know of any Islamized Armenians there who retained some Armenian consciousness. His family came from the Caucasus, and he said that personally, identity became a real question in his mind when he began this journey. Armenians would ask who he was and as he tried to explain himself, he began to ask himself questions too. He started to read about Akhalkalak society and shared lots of articles with his brother, who told him to stop this.

Arık concluded, “I am somehow I think, quite okay not knowing anything about my past. I call myself culturally, I am from the Caucasus, because I know there are a lot of things I cannot discover about my identity.”

When asked whether he would consider doing a DNA test to discover more, he said, “I think who I am, my background, my identity, my preferences, all of that, I think, in this journey somehow maybe I discovered my past. I think living through life…looking at the memory of some of the more common places, I think, enrich who I am. So that is why really I don’t think … who I am, I am Armenian, I am Greek, I am Persian — I am something.”

He added that on the other hand, he felt it was his responsibility living his life this way to tell stories such as that about the Armenian ojak. When pressed as to whether there were other things besides the dream that got him to do this project, he said he didn’t know if he would have done it without the dream. However, he said, “Somehow I am more interested in going deeper about some issues, and I feel that inner connection that is quite important for your job and for your stuff, especially if you can talk about the arts.”

After the event, Vaun declared to the Mirror-Spectator, “As Project Save enters its 50th year in 2025, it’s a priority for me to continue and grow these kinds of programs as well as other initiatives such as the Artist and Research Residencies. Our new location is one of the few photography-centered organizations in this whole area and it’s been exciting to see a growing interest, especially from non-Armenians and younger people.” He added that Project Save is starting the celebration of its 50th anniversary with a holiday party on December 19. For details on the party or to view information on previous Conversations on Photography events, see the website projectsave.org.