Van. The Gakavian (Kagavian) family, April 2, 1906. Seated (from left): Voskehat (grandmother), Harutyun (father), and Aghavni (mother). Standing (in front of grandmother, father): Vahram; standing (from left): Harutyun’s brothers, Tigran, Set, and Hrand. Christine Gardon collection, Berlin. Photograph on the previous page: Hussenig (Harput/Kharberd plain). The Mantarian family, ca. 1912. Seated (from left): Hovakim (1870-1915); Hovakim’s son (name unknown, killed in 1915); Karapet Mantarian (born 1840), father of Hovakim and Gevorg; and Gevorg (1885-1915). Children in front row (from left): Mariam (born 1911, Hussenig) and Karpis/Karapet (born 1910, Hussenig), the son of Gevorg and Haykanush. Standing (from left): [unknown]; Hovakim’s wife (name unknown); [unknown]; [unknown]; [unknown]; Haykanush Mantarian (née Boyajian, born ca. 1890, Hussenig). Gérard Bossière collection, Nantes, France.
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Photo Gallery Families By the late 1800’s, the craft of photography in the Ottoman Empire had become closely affiliated with Armenians, in both Armenian and non-Armenian communities. Going to a studio to be photographed, individually or as a family, was seen as fashionable at the time, and as a sign of upward social mobility. Yet, it was also valuable to those with relatives in far-off countries, particularly those who had recently immigrated to the United States. Thus, urban and rural Armenian families on the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder also began to have their group photos taken, to send to their relatives overseas who now longed for the “old country” and the family they left behind. The images displayed in the pages of this book date back more than 100 years. Each tells the story of a family or individual. When possible, we have noted the identity of the individuals pictured, as well as where the photograph was taken, and the date. When such information was plentiful, we have sought to present it in summarized form. The photographs are unique in that they were all sent to us electronically by visitors to the Houshamadyan website, to be published and disseminated. As their captions reveal, the photos hail from all corners of the globe, and their stories are perhaps not far removed from the following lines, written by Krikor Beledian, that so eloquently describe the story of his family’s photos: "It had revolved around the country a few times, it had passed from one land to the next, staying here a year, there a year, in the bottom of a bag, in the back of a closet, it had traveled, it had tired, it had searched for a place, but it could never stay, could never turn into desertion and forgetting."1 Houshamadyan has become the “station” and the “terminus”2 for these treasures—the abundance of which attests to the richness of our family archives—in an attempt to facilitate and widen their accessibility to the public at large. Today, these photos are to be found scattered throughout the world, in Paris, Los
1 Krikor Beledian, Սեմեր [Semer] [Threshholds] (Paris: “Mashtots”, 1997) pp. 8-9. 2 Ibid., p. 9.
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Angeles, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Yerevan, Aleppo, Montreal, and Beirut. In them, we see families posing before the camera in their native communities of Harput/Kharberd, Van, Sis, Ayntab, Ankara, Marash, Adana, Urfa, Bursa, Malatya, Arapgir, Diyarbakir/ Tigranakert, Ordu, Hajin, and many other places. Each is the glowing reflection and legacy of a particular family’s lost life. At the same time, each photo is a microcosm, a unique sample of the collective fate that befell the Ottoman Armenians. Life and Catastrophe… Such thoughts —of families uprooted or massacred—invariably surface as we glance at these dynamic images. While they are ordinary in that they could have been photographed anywhere during those years, they show images of once-typical families in their native towns and villages, images of their daily lives, which were erased for good. In this context, they remind us of a passage in Roland Barthes’s book when he, while looking at photos of his dearly beloved mother who had recently died, sees one in particular of her as a young girl. For Barthes, this image encapsulates his memory of her perfectly, depicting all of her characteristic traits. “She is going to die,” he thinks, and shudders over a catastrophe that has already occurred.3 The author calls this emotion—which shoots out from within an image, pricking and stinging our sensibilities—punctum.4 The protagonist in Norair Atalian’s short story, an elderly grandfather, perhaps similarly attempts to convey such a punctum to his young granddaughter Perap when he shows her an old photograph taken years ago in Yerznka/Erzincan, which he had been kept in a trunk in the house. It’s a family photo, and the old man teaches the girl the names of all of their family members one by one. The grandfather is a genocide survivor, and while Yerznka is a distant memory for him, he’s never forgotten his family’s former life there. The grandfather then points to a young boy in the photo. It is of him as a boy, about the same age as his granddaughter sitting beside him. “That’s me,” he tells her. “But from now on it’s you. Remember it well, Perap, and don’t forget. From now on, you are me. I don’t exist. You remain and will live seventy and a thousand years.”5 That same night, the grandfather passes away peacefully and departs this world. And he leaves her, and us, for seventy and a thousand years, to experience this punctum, every time we look at these photos of Ottoman Armenians.
3 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981) p. 96. 4 Ibid., p. 27. 5 Norair Atalian, Կապույտ Երզնկա [Kapuyt Yerznka] [Blue Yerznka/Erzincan] (Yerevan: “Soviet Writer”, 1985) p. 181. My thanks to Stephan Astourian for informing me about this short story by Atalian.
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Aghavni Gakavian’s (nÊe Ketenjian, 1878, Van) personal notebook. Here, she has jotted down proverbs and fables from Van. Aghavni began this notebook while she was in Van, and continued to do so during her exile in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Rostov, Istanbul, and Europe. Christine Gardon collection, Berlin.
This, I believe, is the wish of that old grandfather from Yerznka... To remember and to reconstruct our past lives based on these memories, and to never forget the Catastrophe. VahĂŠ Tachjian
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1. Hasanbeyli. An Armenian family. Bibliothèque Orientale, USJ, Lebanon. 2. Ordu. Early 1900’s. Diran Andreassian (seated) with his sisters (from left) Haykuhi, (name unknown), and Imastuhi. Ara Ugurluoglu collection, Anthering, Salzburg.
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2 1. Family tree of the Misakian family from Harput/Kharberd and Mezire/Mamuretülaziz (present-day Elazığ) from 1654 to the 1930’s. Published in Cairo, 1947. Only the names of the male members are shown. Hasmig Khanigian collection, Beirut. 2. Sis. Vartanian family. Standing (from left): Samvel Vardanian, Prapion Vardanian, Pagezar Vardanian (no longer visible in photo, later Abumarakian, born 1893, Sis), Viktoria Vardanian (later Farajian; her husband was killed in 1915, and she died during the deportations in Hauran), and Ludwig Vardanian. Seated, center (from left): Rakel Vardanian (née Nuskhajian) and Mushegh Vardanian (native of Harput/Kharberd; moved to Sis at the age of 17). Seated, on floor (from left): Arusyak Vardanian, Lia Vardanian (later Kazanjian), and Vardan Vardanian. Houshamadyan collection, Berlin, Germany, Courtesy of Victoria Abumarakian, Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon. 27