Ruben Mangasaryan
dal 13/10/2011 al 4/11/2011
Segnalato da
13/10/2011
Ruben Mangasaryan
ACCEA Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan
Ruben Mangasaryan's camera charted its painful progression in exhibitions such as the 1992 'Road to independence', which essentially became the thematic backbone of his entire output. Mangasaryan was naturally required to convey the viscerality and immediacy of unfolding conflicts. But one is struck by the measured, almost studied attention in the structure of his photographs.
A project of 'Ruben Mangasaryan Memorial' Foundation.
Ruben Mangasaryan was born in 1960 in a relatively liberal and modernist Yerevan—
the antithesis of everything his camera would witness two decades later. His
progressive outlook was typical of a generation that would facilitate the collapse of
the Soviet Union and engender a short-lived utopian dream for an independent
Armenia. Two earthquakes, one natural in Gyumri and the other political in Artsakh1
both of which hit the country in 1988 marked the harrowing birth of this dream.
Mangasaryan’s camera charted its painful progression in exhibitions such as the 1992
“Road to independence”, which essentially became the thematic backbone of
Mangasaryan’s entire output.
In 1985 he started working professionally as a photojournalist for agencies such as
“NovostiFoto” in Yerevan. During that time, his images of the devastation of the
Spitak earthquake wound up on the pages of the international press, which would
remain the primary forum for his work. Having spentsix years on the
Artsakhfrontline, Mangasaryan’s worldview as a photographer and aesthetic approach
came into their own.
One of his most memorable worksfrom this period is an image shot during a moment
of relative calm. It depicts a naked soldier as he prepares to dip into a natural hot
spring near one of the mountain roads in Artsakh. He carries only one thing: a
Kalashnikov slung across his shoulder. This simple scene encapsulates the originality
of Mangasaryan’s vision. The nexus of his art is not the specifics of the situation.
Instead, it is the human body that becomes the locus of the image, the device through
which Mangasaryan’s philosophy reveals itself. The metal blackness of the automatic
gun cuts across the soldier’s body with a violent force. Seen from the back, the man is
caught unawares and is devoid of any kind of insignia or protection. He is reduced to
flesh,a modern St. Sebastian whose body is likely to get pierced by bullets. The
soldier represents an elemental truth: the perpetual struggle between the body’s desire
to live and enjoy and the impulse of the mind to transcend the corporeal and achieve
spiritual grace based on some form of ideological righteousness. Unlike the St.
Sebastians of Renaissance enlightenment, Mangasaryan’s soldier does not trumpet a
virtuous triumphover death. The viewer is simply left to contemplate the tragedy of
the human condition.
This reference to an art historical and philosophical figure is not incidental. According
to his brother Tigran, Mangasaryan initially took up painting. His father,
SargisMangasաrian, was a professional painter and Tigran would become one too.
But Mangasaryan felt inadequate in this medium and turned to the camera instead,
which he was familiar with since he was seven.2His failed love affair with painting,
however,remained and would inform much of his photography’s imagery and
intellectual depth.
Working for agencies such as the BBC, Mangasaryan was naturally required to
convey the viscerality and immediacy of unfolding conflicts. But one is struck by the
measured, almost studied attention in the structure of his photographs. Almost
obsessive in his search for the perfect composition, “he would take shot after shot
before he was satisfied”3. Later in life, when he taught photography in the Caucasian
region, he would take his students to the National Gallery of Armenia and point to
examples of how meaning and subtext could be conveyed through the use of light and
composition.
These formal traits, borrowed from painting and processed through the camera’s lens,
echo through numerous images in this exhibition. In one work, the enormous crowd
marching for independence across the “Hrazdan” bridge recalls Tintoretto’s dramatic
manipulations of perspective. In another photograph, an unconscious, grief stricken
war widow is embraced and carried by dozens of hands like a Rogiervan der Weyden
Virgin. We can also see Murillo, Velasquez and Courbet referenced in his remarkable
2004 series “Black Life”.
As Susan Sontag wrote, “all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their
captions”.4 Perhaps that is why the photographer did not title his works. Each
photograph belongs to larger series, which Ruben frequently presented as slideshows.
But can the images speak for themselves? Roland Barthes, the great French cultural
theorist answered in the negative.5 Context, especially in war photography is
everything. In Mangasaryan’s best work, the context has open gates: these images
somehow seem to be outside time and place. “War could be photographed
anywhere... in every daily situation” he said.6 He understood that truth was a
construct with an identity, thus he sought to go beyond the limitations of ideology and
see the world from as many different viewpoints as possible. It is this profound
humanity and remarkable ability to distill meaning into visual form that ensures the
enduring power of Mangasaryan’s photographs even while the stories they
documented are long in the past.
Vigen Galstyan
1 Artsakh is the Armenian name of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh, which broke away from
Azerbaijan in 1988 during a six year war that ended in a cease fire in 1994. The war claimed over
twenty five thousand lives, as did the 1988 earthquake in the northern part of the country.
2 Correspondence with Tigran Mangasaryan, 26.09.2011
3 Robert Kamoyan quoted in Marine Martirosyan, “Rubik was a man without limits”, interview
with painter Robert Kamoyan, 168 jam weekly online, July 18, 2009,
http://www.168.am/am/articles/19436‐pr
4 Susan Sontag, Regarding the pain of others, Picador, NY, 2003, p.6
5 See Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Vintage, London, 1993
6 Ruben Mangasaryan, Jurnalisty na voyne v Karabakhe, undated, published in the online library
of the Centre of Extreme Journalism, Moscow,
http://www.library.cjes.ru/online/?a=con&b_id=32&c_id=733
Armenian Center For Contemporary Experimental Art (“NPAK” in Armenian acronym)
1/3 Pavstos Biuzand Blvd., Yerevan, Armenia