A day before the 24th of April, the day of mourning the victims of the Genocide, Armenians marched towards the memorial Tsitsernakaberd. The march with torches has become a tradition. I don’t remember whether it was also done last year, but the public burning of the Turkish flag was something that surprised me. Afterwards throughout the way I heard people shouting the most offensive things. Maybe this approach is normal and I’ve simply forgotten how nationalistic we can be, but I just don’t see what it leads to.
Continue reading ‘93rd Anniversary of Armenian Genocide, Armenians protest’
I’ve been entertaining myself too much today not to post some of the photos of the people being photographed at the presidents’ pictures stand. It was put on the Republic Square during the balloon festival today.
One of my friends said that all the festival and balloons were something that the government should have thought of earlier to distract people from all sorts of protests. Another friend, who is a supporter of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, said that the balloons don’t take people high enough. My dear friend of course would never get high enough to start liking our government.
Anyway… bottom-line, we are not yet in the danger of amusing ourselves to death. This is only the beginning.
Continue reading ‘People amused by presidents on Republic Square’
First day after the State of Emergency, and as it was expected, lots of people crowded the central streets of Yerevan. The silent protest with people standing in a line did not really happen, but you could see some people line up at different spots of streets. Many of the participants found their own ways of expression.
It was interesting that most of the active participants were women. Some of them quiet, others occasionally shouting at the policemen and being pretty angry in general. About ten times I was asked whether I was from Haylur of the Public TV and then kicked away because “there’s no use of the photographs, as you are not showing them to anyone”.
Young people were active and seemed to be actually the ones who were trying to begin and keep the row of people.
Continue reading ‘Activity after State of Emergency’
A month or so ago I went looking for a tattoo artist whom I could photograph at work, because I needed a close-up picture of that. I photographed the process, the beginning of it, and want to show it to you now. Gago, who is 20, makes a tattoo of a crying woman on Erik’s back.
To me at that point, maybe now too, tattoo artists seemed people who should be approached with great seriousness, because they are people who change other people for ever. I asked Gago how he felt about that. “Yes, there is a level of responsibility,” Gago said to me, and looked calm enough for me not to worry too much any more.
Continue reading ‘The making of a tattoo, to worry or not’
It turns into an obsession for me to cover Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s rallies, but this time it was an unpleasant one, too cold, although warmer than it’s been these days. Probably that’s why there were mostly men there, and much less of the little old ladies that seemed to be half of the supporters during previous rallies. The number of people was pretty much the same as before, but before almost all the people were from Yerevan, and this time most of them came from regions.
Continue reading ‘Second day of presidential campaign, Ter-Petrosyan’s rally’
This is something that I’ve wanted to post for a long time, portraits of people I’ve been photographing. They are from different occasions, made during the last three months.
Continue reading ‘Portraits of some Armenians’
