21.10.2008



The Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute in Yerevan presented a public program by Ruth Thomasian, Founder and Executive Director of Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives, the premier archive of Armenian photographs in the United States. Ms. Thomasian's program, titled Project SAVE Archives: Armenians Through the Camera's Eye, is an introduction to the work she started in 1975 to collect and document the photographic record of the Armenian people, wherever and whenever they have lived. Ms. Thomasian will tell how and why she began collecting photographs, will explain the basic archival methods she and her staff use, and then through a PowerPoint presentation will share a wide variety of photographs with their stories.
Project SAVE Archives, located in Watertown, Massachusetts, has a growing collection of more than 27,000 photographs dating from 1860. Unique in its mission, Project SAVE preserves the fragmented heritage of the dispersed Armenian people through photographs and memories of life—not only in Historic Armenia but in the various places they have lived, right up to the present. Collections include images from the Ottoman, Russian, and Persian empires; the Armenian Diaspora created in the wake of the Genocide with particular emphasis on the Armenian-American community; and the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia as well as today's Republic of Armenia—and Project SAVE welcomes more additions from Hayastan.