NY-based photographer Scout Tufankjian has photographed Armenians across the globe, from Los Angeles to Lebanon.
Almost 100 years ago, more than one million people died in the midst of the Armenian Genocide. Armenian leaders were rounded up and killed. Men were put to work as beasts of burden. Women and children were forced to march to imaginary camps in Syria that Ottoman Empire authorities knew they would never reach.
The forced evection from their land created a massive diaspora of Armenian communities around the world. Armenians are now preparing to mark the centennial of that tragedy with the official remembrance day set for April 24. With the visit of reality stars Kim and Khloe Kardashian last week to the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, the massacre is getting more attention than it has in years.
Photographer Scout Tufankjian asked Armenians living not just in their homeland but across the globe to submit their thoughts on what their heritage means to them. In this photoseries, a preview of her new book There Is Only the Earth: Images from the Armenian Diaspora Project , Tufankjian combines their answers with the photos she traveled around the world to capture, showing how a people managed to not just survive but thrive after nearly being extinguished.
Little Armenia Parking Lot — Hollywood, USA
"I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are." - William Saroyan in Antranik and the Spirit of Armenia
Scout Tufankjian
Syrian Refugee — Berdzor, Nagorno-Karabakh
"I was surprised by how unfamiliar Armenia felt to me- how I have been told all my life this is my homeland and my '€home' but what does that mean?" — Lara Sarkissian (USA)
Scout Tufankjian
Lernagog, The Republic of Armenia
Scout Tufankjian
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