There Was and Was Not (2023-2024)
Artemis on her wedding day
New York, 1950's
My cousins and I gather at the foot of his green velvet chair, nestled upon overlapping rugs on the living room floor.
He, the King of Stories, sits above us. His large hands move about as he speaks.
“There was, and was not…”
These are the words that begin our grandfather’s tales, transporting us to ancient worlds full of laughing fish and nightingales that sing a thousand songs.
Looking beyond his shrinking frame, I watch my grandmother, Yiayia, washing dishes with her back to us. Her stories were ones I’d only hear at the precipice of sleep in the early morning, as she sat at the edge of my bed with her sister speaking in their secret language: a medley of Greek, Armenian, and Turkish. Tales not of an ancient world, but of an old country—one that now exists only in memory.
Unlike the fables told by my grandfather, my YiaYia's were stories were real, dramatic, and evocative—ones that did not exist in a book, but in her mind, and now in mine. They spoke of a place and a people that no longer existed in their original context. There was never a definitive beginning or end to her stories. The trauma of war and displacement had created gaps in her memory. As I got older and began to question the details more closely, I found myself increasingly drawn to the effects on her memory rather than the memories themselves. They were like an unfinished puzzle in my mind, and instead of trying to find the missing pieces, I began to wonder why they had gone missing in the first place.
There Was and Was Not (2023–2024) attempts to explore the complex relationship between my grandmother and her memories. As I began to examine the effects of displacement and war on my her recollections, I considered how memories manifest tangibly in objects—specifically, in family photo albums. Thinking about the existence of these landscapes in their actual geographical context, and how the memories of these landscapes manifest within the images, I began removing elements and figures from the images—just as details have been obscured from my her own recollections. This not only illustrates the importance of remnants once the core of the image, or memory, is displaced, but also invites reflection on how, despite physical absence, memories continue to disrupt and haunt the present landscapes from which the subjects were originally and forcibly removed.
While this body of work reflects a personal and familial experience, I began to think of it within the broader context of photography and memory, another complex relationship full of archival gaps and holes. Recording my YiaYia's stories and working with her family photo albums, I began thinking of the potential oral storytelling holds to fill visual voids, and vice versa.
Inspired by Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory and Ibtisam Azem's novel The Book of Disappearance (2012), this work delves into themes of invisibility, and seeks to disrupt the boundary line between the real and the spectral. It symbolizes the liminal space on the precipice of sleep, when I would hear my grandmother’s soft voice and dream of the stories she recall in whispers to her sister.
Artemis and Zohrab on Tavit's Graduation Day
New York, 1980's
"I’m mad at you.
Your memory, which is engraved in my mind, has all these holes in it. Am I not remembering all that you told me, or was it incomprehensible?
I was very young when I started listening to your stories. Later, when I turned to them for help, I discovered these holes. I started to ask you about them.
But the more I asked, the more you got mixed up, or maybe I did.
How would things not get mixed up?"
- Ibtisam Azem, The Book of Disappearance
Mari and Noubar
Athens, Greece. 1930's
"I was born in Athens, Greece. 1941. May 21st.
My name was my grandmother's name (Artemis). She was born in Izmir, in Turkey, of course. She got married and she had two kids. My uncle Artin, the first son, and then was my father, Noubar. Their father, my grandma's husband, he came to America. He stayed 5 years, and he established himself. He was a barber, and he bought a bus, too. Then he went back to Turkey to bring his family after five years. My father was little kid when he left. And during that time they had problems in Turkey, the massacres started. And…. whoever could leave- you know they have those ships, and some of them they went to Crete, some of them they went to Patras, and some of them went to Athens. So it was only women and children, but a lot of women they hid their husbands, like my mothers father, my grandma hid him and he came with them. My father’s father, his name was Artin, he was afraid if they caught him they might kill his wife and his kids, and so he came out of the boat. He took them in and he came out.
They killed him. All the men. And so, they came to Athens, my grandma and the two sons… and that was that."
"My mothers mother, my grandmother, had four daughters and a son. The son was the oldest. My mother was the fourth one, then there was Araxie. They lived in Patras. It’s like 5 hours from Athens by bus. My father had a cousin that married my mothers sister, Arshaluys. He said to my father, “Noubar, you know there’s another sister and her name is Marie. Why don't you go and ask for her hand?” And that's the way they got married in the old days. He went to Patras, he met her, and they got married. Then they left for Athens. They were immigrants you know. In Athens they had homes for the immigrants, and they lived there with my fathers mother.
When I was born, it was the beginning of the war."
Baby Artemis
Patras, Greece. 1940's
Priest, Grandpa Manoog, Baby Levon
Lebanon, Date Unknown
"When my father came to Greece, my grandmother used to bring him to a tailor shop after school. That’s how he became a tailor. And when he grew up, he went to school and he learned how to cut. He was an excellent tailor. Beautiful suits he used to make. Him and another guy opened a tailor shop in Athens, in a good spot. But, when the bombing started, the store was destroyed. During that time, we had a little garden in the front of the house, so my father built one room that was like a store. When things calmed down, he started sewing suits for people and he got very busy. But before that, we had no food, no nothing. I was born and my mother took me to Patras because they had less troubles there. My father used to follow the railroad tracks to different villages and trade her trousseaus, just for a piece of bread or oil. And… you know. We had no money and he had no job."
"I remember in the front of our house there were all these wires. And across from us, there was a factory. The factory had a trap door because they had a dog. I had a little cat, Lulu. I was about four. The cat ran out through the door, I chased her, and I went through the little door too. And on the other side was a wall, and on the wall there were English soldiers all lined up in their white hats. They caught the cat and they called me over. I remember this like a dream you know. They called me over and they gave me my cat and a piece of chewing gum. They took me to the door and they led me out to my house.
I remember this like a dream…"
Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon. Date Unknown
Sirvart and Zohrab
Bronx, New York. 1930's
"I remember my father when the bombing started. We used to go to another place for shelter, and he used to carry the mattress on his head with my mothers sheets and blankets. I remember that. Then there was a fire that burnt down all the immigrant houses, they meant to burn down the police station but instead they burnt the immigrant homes. Three blocks. After three blocks was the church. The priest climbed to the top of the dome of the church and he was watering it and all of the young men were bringing buckets of water, and they stopped the fire! The church was made of all wood. My father’s aunt used to live there with her kids and husband, three daughters and two sons. Their house burnt down. The priest was friends with my father, and he knew them very well. He had an office and so they lived there for a while until the government gave them another place to live."
“My father had a friend, he was a dentist. He lived right next to us. He sewed him a suit. A brown, beautiful suit. I was going to school and just before Easter, they bought a little lamb. I used to come home from school and take the lamb to an empty lot across from our house, to eat the grass. One day I came home from school, I was in elementary school, it was after the war and I just started first grade. I was five or six. As I was walking with the little lamb, I saw a shoe sticking out of the ground. This dentist was missing for weeks, no one knew what happened to him. I saw the shoe sticking out of the ground. I went home and told my mother what I saw. She said, “What color was it?”, “Brown,” I said. My mother told my father they should go and see it. They went and my mother tried to move the shoe, and it was very hard. They called the police, and they dug out the body. Right away my father recognized the brown suit. It was the dentist. They killed him. That’s the way it was.”
Assadourian Family portrait
Greece, Date Unknown