Wednesday 3 July 2013

mOTHER Armenia (photo exhibit)

I like the way they put it: mOTHER Armenia. Great to see incredibly talented and free-minded group of Armenian women photographers and photojournalists presenting their works in Yerevan's centre for contemporary arts - NPAK.

Including in the exhibit are the works by my favourite Nazik Armenakyan, from her "Transgenders in Armenia" photo-project, documenting the lives of transgender or transvestite sex workers.
Transgenders are a big part of my project about LGBT people in Armenia. Photographing transgender sex workers was a shock at first— unreal or, more accurately, surreal. I was shaken: they weren’t just a found object in photographic terms. It was a phenomenon that contradicted and negated all my previously held notions of man and woman.
[Read the full interview with Nazik Armenakyan here: http://www.fotoevidence.com/nazik-armenakian]

Also presented is Anush Babjanyan with her "special women" / 'inlandish' project.
“I am a woman who is not accepted by the society,” out of all the women I photographed, none would say this or anything similar. Yet every time any of them walks along the street people look with amazement. And I would look at them just as everyone else. There was strange interest and respect I felt towards them, so I decided to get to know them closer, talk to them, and take their photo. (photo story)
Below is a video report from the exhibit by RFE/RL Armenia service (AM):

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