Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at 1pm Eastern / 10am Pacific
On Zoom and the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute YouTube channel.

PRESENTERS
DR. JOSEPH MALIKIAN, Curator of the digital exhibit at the Armenian Image Archive
STEVEN SIM, Photographer and Explorer

 

Ohannes Kurkdjian is regarded as one of the prominent Armenian photographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known as the first photographer to capture images of the medieval ruins located in the ancient Armenian capital of Ani.

In this webinar, the Promise Armenian Institute marks the launch of a new digital exhibit at the Armenian Image Archive, which explores Kurkdjian’s stereoscopic images of Ani in 1881, taken over a period of five months after he was a photographer for the Russian Army. Dr. Joseph Malikian, curator of this new exhibit, will tell the story of Kurkdjian’s photographic expedition to Ani, and the opposition he encountered from the Russian authorities.

In the webinar’s second half, Steven Sim will focus on contemporary Ani. Sim is a Scottish explorer who has taken over 100,000 photos of historic Armenian artifacts and monuments. He will discuss the contemporary challenges facing the Ani site, based on his eyewitness journeys there, and to other parts of Turkey, over a 40-year period.

The new exhibitions “Ruins of Ani” and “Suribaya” will launch on March 10, 2023, on www.armenianimage.org.

ORGANIZERS
Armenian Film Foundation
UCLA Promise Armenian Institute

CO-SPONSORS
Ararat-Eskijian Museum
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)
UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History
UCLA Narekatsi Chair in Armenian Studies
UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies