Habitat for Humanity Exhibition
HFH Armenia Beneficiary, Gavar, Gegharkunik Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Habitat for Humanity 2006
After last month’s Hetq Online exhibition comes news of another, but this time for Habitat for Humanity in Armenia. The exhibition will be held as part of their Catholicos Garegin II Work Project and is set to kick off at the Marriot Armenia Hotel on 4 September 2006. More details about the project are available here.
The build will take place in northern Armenia, near Lake Sevan. During just one week, volunteers from Armenian churches and Diaspora worldwide will build homes alongside future Habitat homeowner families from the community. Our goal is to complete 37 homes, symbolizing each Diocese and one for the Holy See, representing the Catholicos of all Armenians.
The exhibition will then be moved to a few other locations throughout the same month. More on that when I know the details. Still have one more day of shooting in Gavar this month to get more material before finalizing 40 images for display towards the end of August. Some of the images shot so far have been posted on this blog here.
It’s kind of nice this time round because not only will the exhibition be properly planned, with the photographs presented better in proper frames, but my mum also flies in to Armenia on the same day. It will be her first time in the country, and as she’s not Armenian it will be quite interesting for her, I’m sure.
It will also be interesting for me because I’ll be shooting the last remaining images on film, and they’ll mainly be portraits of beneficiaries as well as a fly on the wall exercise in documenting a day among volunteers from the Diaspora as they work with locals on finishing construction in Gavar.
The image above was taken on film, and I have to be honest, I really love the idea of moving away from digital for the last remaining photographs. Mainly because the Canon Eos 20d I was using felt like a toy compared to my Nikon F5, but also because I’m still gob smacked at the amount of detail my Nikon Coolscan can pull from film.
Of course, it takes significantly longer to get the image ready for printing, but in a sense each image becomes more valuable and I feel like I’m taking more care producing an image for display. Sometimes the digital process feels more “disposable,” if that makes sense. Still, would love to get my hands on a Nikon D2x – the digital equivalent of my F5.
Anyway, more details regarding the exhibition will be posted when they’re available, although I don’t quite know if it will be invitation only for the first day or not. If it is, I’ll see if I can invite Christine from Local Life in Armenia after she posted a brief entry about my last exhibition that also included some valid criticisms of how the photos were presented. I appreciated that a lot.
Incidently, I have quite a few projects that I’d like to exhibit here in Yerevan. Most of the work is already complete, although the projects will always be ongoing, so if anyone would like to sponsor an exhibit to raise awareness in society please contact me by email. These projects include poverty, children in residential care, and related issues.
Anyone interested in my book of articles and photographs, Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy, can get hold of a copy in Yerevan by sending an email to the same address. The cost of the book is a very reasonable 5,000 AMD or 2,500 AMD for local students.
On a related note, it was interesting to read about Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour donating millions to housing project in the U.K in 2003.
He became a Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List the same year.
If only some of the local money in Armenia could learn from such an example.
Totally unrelated, but my maternal Uncle was made both an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) by the Queen after a distinguished career in the British army that included heading the logistics side of the UNPROFOR mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina during 1993.
I’m still rather proud of that. Good on him, and not least because I was pleased to see that he had some Red Hot Chili Peppers on his iPod when I played with it last year, and had just taken delivery of a rather lovely new limited edition Ducati sports bike.
Did I say proud? Perhaps I should say jealous…
Comment by Onnik — August 6, 2006 @ 6:55 pm