My cousins and I gather at the foot of the green velvet chair, nestled on stacked rugs in our grandfather’s living room. He, the King of Stories, sits above us with his large hands moving about as he speaks. “There once was, and was not…”
These are the words that begin his tales, transporting us to ancient worlds with laughing fish and nightingales that sing one thousand songs. Looking beyond his shrinking frame, I watch my grandmother, Yiayia, facing the kitchen window with her back to us. Her stories were different, full of mystery and melancholy. Tales placed high on a shelf and out of my reach—ones I’d overhear at night, my ear pressed to the bedroom door, trying to make sense of the medley of languages she shares with her sisters. I can only catch a few words. She retells stories, changing details, sometimes claiming to forget them entirely. I recall fragments and try to fill in the gaps.
Her memories drape over mine like a blanket—sometimes I can glimpse through its weight, but mostly it’s shrouded in darkness. Like a moth, trauma has created holes in the fabric of our shared recollections.
"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
Artemis and Zohrab on Tavit's Graduation Day
New York, 1980's
There Once Was and Was Not (2023–) addresses a life that often feels disjointed and a cultural identity understood only in fragments. This project confronts the realities of an undervalued community, a forgotten genocide, and the effects of such on memory. Focusing on my Armenian family's personal archive of images, I explore how their forced displacement, during and after the 1915 Armenian Genocide, has shaped the preservation of collective memory and identity, with consideration for the broader Armenian diaspora.
By obscuring figures in my grandparents' archival images, I illustrate how, despite their physical absence, our memories continue to disrupt and haunt the present landscapes from which they were forcibly removed. The interlacing of family archives with altered images—a blend of visual art and narrative created in collaboration with my grandparents—invites a meditation on how memory contends with the devastation of displacement, war, and genocide. How can we utilize oral storytelling to fill archival gaps in photographic databases?
This body of work explores the limitations of photography, archival gaps that exist within their databases, and what potential oral storytelling holds to fill these visual voids. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory and Ibtisam Azem's novel The Book of Disappearance (2012), There Once Was and Was Not delves into themes of invisibility, and seeks to disrupt the boundary line between the real and the spectral. With communities from Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) to Gaza facing genocide and historical erasure, these ideas transcend beyond physical archives to explore how the memories of violently displaced communities haunt geographical landscapes.
Artemis on her wedding day
New York, 1950's
Conversations with our elders about their traumas is difficult. This project has allowed my grandparents and I to speak on a level that is usually tiptoed around. Despite their eventual absence, their memories will continue to inhabit the shadows of my world. And despite the absence of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands, I maintain the belief that the land holds memories of its caretakers.
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. And she got married, she had two kids. My uncle Artin, the first son, and then was my Father Noubar. And their father, my grandma's husband, he came to America. He stays 5 years, he establish himself, he was a barber, and he bought a bus, too. Then he came 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 only women and children, but a lot of women they hide their husbands, like my mothers father, my grandma hide him and he came with them. My father’s father, his name was Artin, he was afraid if they catch 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 had four daughters and a son. The son was the oldest. My mother was the fourth one, then 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 he lived there with his mother, and the brother was married and had two kids so they lived close to each other. And so my mother lived with my father and her mother in law.
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, a partner, 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 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."
"On the front of the house they had all these wires. As time went on, I got older. 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 across from the factory was a wall, and 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 back out.
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. After the war was over, that's when my father built the store. Then the Civil War started. 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 water and they stopped the fire. It was all made of 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