Ohannes Kurkdjian is regarded as one of the prominent Armenian photographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known as one of the first photographers to capture images of the medieval ruins located in the ancient Armenian capital of Ani which is situated in Turkey’s province of Kars and is adjacent to the closed border with the Republic of Armenia. Today, this revered UNESCO World Heritage site, which sits on a hilltop near the bank of the Akhuryan River, is regarded as “so symbolic and central for Armenians as a religious and cultural site, as a national heritage symbol, and as a symbol of nationhood.” (Watenpaugh) ²

From 961 to 1045, the medieval city of Ani served as the last capital of the Bagratuni Armenian dynasty. At its peak, this kingdom was the center of Armenian civilization. Within a period of forty to fifty years, Ani was transformed from a small fortress town to a large medieval city. In 992, the Armenian Catholicosate moved its seat to Ani. With the many churches and chapels that were constructed on this sacred site, it has been symbolically dubbed as the “city of 1,001 churches.” Ani was one of the world’s largest cities with a population well over 100,000. With the city controlling trade routes between Byzantium, Persia, Syria, and central Asia, it was an important crossroads and trading hub for merchant caravans.⁵

Following his pilgrimage to the hallowed ruins of Ani in 1906, the priest, Vartabed Krikor Balakian, was profoundly moved by the splendor and magnificence of the “eternal monuments” scattered throughout this medieval city. He noted:

“I was overjoyed at this opportunity to see Ani. I had a thirst to see those eternal moments of the past glory of our forefathers. I wanted to kiss that holy soil.” ³

“Truly it is an impossible thing to recall all this and not be moved, since every stone cross and inch of soil is inundated and irrigated with the blood and tears of the Armenian; every ruin and every inscription, and every column or arch ornamented with carvings has an ancient story of its past glory.” ⁴

Ohannes Kurkdjian

Ohannes Kurkdjian was born in 1851 in Gurun, a town and district of Sivas Province of Turkey. Upon completion of an apprenticeship in Europe in 1870, he moved to Tiflis, Georgia to establish a commercial photographic practice. During the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), he served as a photographer for the Russian Army in the northeastern sections of Turkey. While he was in the region, Kurkdjian’s deep desire to see parts of his lost homeland in the Armenian highlands prompted him to visit the ruins of Ani. He was captivated and inspired by the remnants of this medieval kingdom. A rediscovery of Armenia’s past seemed to arouse strong nationalist sentiments about his cultural heritage. After the war, Kurkdjian relocated to Yerevan, Armenia to establish a photographic studio.

In the summer of 1879 after Russia won the war and acquired the regions of Kars and Ardahan from Turkey, Kurkdjian was determined to return to Ani to conduct a comprehensive photographic study of the ruins. He and his team of four companions encountered many hardships during the five months they were on location to carry out this challenging project. Working in and around the ruins of Ani, food was scarce throughout the site and in the surrounding poor villages. The absence of lodging facilities for travelers forced Kurkdjian and his men to take refuge in the main cathedral of Surp Asdvadzadzin (Church of the Holy Mother of God).⁶


Upon his return to Yerevan, Kurkdjian published The Armenian Ruins of Ani in 1881. This album, consisting of a set of forty stereoscopic photographs, was housed in a cloth-covered cardboard box decorated with embossed gold tooling. The collection was inscribed in Armenian and French rather than Russian. It came with two booklets, one in French and German, and the other in Armenian but not Russian. As Galstyan notes:

“This handsome album, purposefully printed in Armenian and French and not Russian, was an example of a local’s attempt to introduce his colonized people to their newly rediscovered heritage. It was part of a bigger project to resuscitate scholarly and national interest in Armenia’s patrimony.” ⁷

The Russian authorities deemed the photographs of Ani as part and parcel of Armenian nationalism which undermined the tsar’s objective to fortify a highly centralized, autocratic Russified state. Once Kurkdjian’s stereoscopic landscapes were under the scrutiny of the Russian authorities, a closer examination of the poses and gazes of the figures within the images (views 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 13, and 27) suggested further evidence of nationalism and sedition. The images of “melancholic” figures seemingly lost in deep thought about the glory of Armenia’s past evoked in the viewer “a sense of what it would be like to wander the ruins of the deserted ruins” and “to dream of a lost world.”⁸ The camera’s lens, which captured these relics of Armenia’s past, not only served as a powerful tool to stimulate nationalistic sentiments in the Armenian communities within the Ottoman and Russian Empires but it also fostered “public consciousness in the West concerning the ‘Armenian Question.’”⁹Hence, on an international level, reproduction of Kurkdjian’s images in European periodicals, such as the London-based 1885 publication of The Graphic, garnered world-wide attention to the harrowing plight of the Armenians and the destruction of their cultural heritage by past and present foreign occupiers.

In addition to the production of the stereoscopic The Armenian Ruins of Ani, Kurkdjian actively took part in the growing Armenian liberation movement. Disheartened by the process of Russification, in one of his letters he noted: “Everything, every work in our life, instead of moving forward, seems to be coming to a standstill.”¹⁰ Kurkdjian’s work and nationalistic fervor came to the attention of the Russian authorities. To evade arrest and persecution, he fled to Vienna in 1881 and remained there before immigrating to the Indonesian island of Surabaya in 1886. In Surabaya, Kurkdjian established one of the most renowned photographic ateliers, and he assumed a prominent position as court photographer to the Queen of Holland.

References

1. David Low, “The Ruins of Armenia: Cultural Documentation in Late Nineteenth and Early Twenthieth Century Photography,” Programme of Armenian Studies, SOAS, London, May 28, 2015, 21-22.
2. Heghnar Watenpaugh, in “Recent Publication Highlights Complexities of Uncovering the History of the Medieval City of Ani,” by Katie Vanadzin, in Armenian Weekly, January 29, 2015.
3. Krikor Balakian, The Ruins of Ani. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019), xi.
   Ibid., 77.
4. Virtual Ani. http://.virtualani.org/history/part1.htm
5. Ani Kirakosyan, “Photo-Recorder of Ruins,” in Armenian Art, 3-4, 2008, 25-26.
6. Vigen Galstyan, “Ohannes Kurkdjian’s Duality,” https://www.academia.edu/42376454/Ohannes_Kurkdjians_Duality
7. David Low, “The Ruins of Armenia: Cultural Documentation in Late Nineteenth and Early Twenthieth Century Photography,” Programme of Armenian Studies, SOAS, London, May 28, 2015, 13.
8. Ibid., 14.
9. Ani Kirakosyan, “Photo-Recorder of Ruins,” in Armenian Art, 3-4, 2008, 25-26.

Acknowledgments

Photographs in this exhibit are in the Malikian and Sim Collections.  They may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the permission of Joseph E. Malikian and Steven Sim.