Opening Reception is on Saturday, April 13, from 5-7 p.m.; Exhibition April 1-30
By Chad Winthrop
Holding a cane in his right hand, Movses Haneshyan, 105, slowly approaches a life-size landscape.
He pauses, looks at the image, and begins to sing, “My home… My Armenia.” It’s the first time Movses is seeing his home in 98 years.
A century ago, the Ottomans initiated a policy of deportations, mass murder and rape to destroy the Armenian presence in the Ottoman Empire.
By the war’s end, more than a million people, from what is now modern-day Turkey, were eliminated. It was one of first genocides of the 20th century, one that Turkish authorities deny to this day. Movses and his father survived.
Venice Arts and Month of Photography LA (MOPLA) are pleased to present 1915, the compelling work of photographer Diana Markosian that documents Movses, and other survivors, as they reconnect with their lost homeland: what they had, what they lost, and what they have found again.
Diana’s images can be found in National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times.
She is a Magnum Nominee and the recipient of the Chris Hondros Emerging Photographer Grant, Magnum Emerging Photographer Fund, and the Firecracker Grant.
In 2013, she took part in the World Press Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam and was selected as PDN’s 30 Photographers to Watch.
Venice Arts ignites, expands, and transforms the lives of Los Angeles’ low-income youth through photography and film education, and uses its participatory storytelling practices to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities around the world.
