Consequence: Artefact, 2019

Photography as testimony and remedy

Areg Balayan’s portraits from beyond the conflict zone

Vigen Galstyan PhD curator, photography historian

 Following the success of his 2016 documentary series M.O.B. Areg Balayan has emerged as a distinctive new voice in Armenian documentary photography. Balayan’s intensely intimate and sensual portrayal of conscript life in a remote army unit during the four-day war that reignited between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces in April 2016, was received with widespread acclaim, winning the Aurora Prize for Humanitarian Photography and a second place of the LensCulture Exposure Awards in 2017.

 Prior to starting out as a freelance commercial and news photographer in 2005, Balayan received his initial education in the graphic arts — an aspect of his career that echoes in the painterly sensibilities of his documentary work. These aesthetic associations are often drawn from the classical tradition of Western art, with their attendant notions of humanism, spiritual enlightenment and the redemptive power of art. As a member of the PAN photo news agency, Balayan’s images frequently depict various military or civic conflicts in his country. Yet, what draws the photographer’s attention are the more complex, moral and universal issues regarding the condition of humanity, which underline any political or social strife. It is by revealing these painful questions that Balayan attempts to go beyond the surface facts and generate a space for empathy and dialogue.

 The collaborative project “Consequence: Artefact”, is a further attempt by Balayan and artist Edik Boghosyan to investigate and represent the aftereffects of the frozen military conflict in Nagorno- Karabakh. By taking an archaeological approach the artists aim to break-through the partisan barriers that divide people across enemy lines. The combination of salvaged metallic remnants from war-torn buildings and photographs of residents who live in the conflict zone is built on a fascinating interplay between historical traces and the living present. It is a space where trauma becomes naturalised and internalised, affecting the way people see their lives, the world and the future. Balayan photographs the war victims in a matter of fact manner, not shying away from showing us their horrific scars and injuries. The physicality of this suffering is underscored by the distorted debris or medical documents that the individuals are posed with — a painful reality made more visceral through Balayan’s use of saturated and vivid colour photography. Like the mauled pieces of machinery and buildings, these people are witnesses to horrors that are not possible to fully represent or speak about. Folding upon each other the historical traces and contemporary reality, the images act as an unsentimental testimony about the lasting burden of war’s damage, which affects and transforms ordinary lives, long after the sound of guns has died down.

 However, as a multi-disciplinary project, Consequence: Artefact is more than just a resigned representation of history. On a deeper level, it acts as a dramatic narrative about the way art can mediate the past and speak about what is often beyond political diplomacy. Balayan’s portraits are not merely statistics, but inspiring odes to people who remain committed to life and place, despite the unimaginable destruction that has wrecked the natural course of their lives. Relying on the best traditions of humanist photography, Balayan reminds us that beyond every conflict, on every side, are unique individuals whose suffering cannot be justified by any theoretical arguments for wars that should be avoided at all cost. Finally, this is a rare instance in which contemporary artists engage with the still unresolved issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict — a subject that has remained inexplicably slighted in contemporary Armenian art and demands continual exposure and discussion.