Armenia in Stunning Photos: A Look at a Bygone World

By Sherrie Schroeder, Cape Codder Newspaper

For five years, Robert Kurkjian and Matthew Karanian traveled around Armenian countryside photographing the orphaned, the aged, the young people, the farmers who make up what is still the Armenian nation. "Out of Stone: Armenia-Artsakh" is a marvelously evocative coffee-table book with more than 140 color photos printed on archival quality paper that shows how an ancient culture still survives. 

The book also includes Armenian poetry and writing. A New York Public Television special on "The Armenian Americans" was aired in March featuring "Out of Stone."

From 1995 to 1999 Kurkjian was head of the Environmental Center at the American University in Armenia. This university was created after the dreadful 1988 earthquakes that killed almost 25,000 people. Matthew Karanian, a Connecticut attorney, met Kurkjian during their first year at the University, and they began their photo treks across the land of their ancestors.

The 1988 earthquake were only the latest of tragedies in this land of historic tragedy. In 1915 the Turkish government managed to kill more than one and a half million Armenians, theoretically because they were a "threat" to national security. Armenians and most of the rest of the world call it genocide, although the official United States viewpoint does not use this word. Turkey still denies the whole event. 

Artsakh is within the borders of Azerbaijan, a former USSR province. Present-day Armenia was also Soviet territory, and is between Turkey and Azerbaijan, with a closed barbed-wire border between it and Turkey.

This area, of course, is not all of what was formerly Armenia. In lucid and direct text, "Out of Stone" recounts the history of present-day Armenia. "For only the second time since AD1375, the Armenian nation is self-governed."

To look at these photos is to take an impromptu trip through the region. You feel as if you are in a by-gone time, a timeless time, a land of natural wonders and earthy, real people, what might be called salt-of-the-earth folks.

A page by page guide at the end of the book gives details about the pictures, so they aren't marred by text.

Mt. Ararat (the landing site of the Biblical Ark?) broods over a high lake, elsewhere rises out of the clouds, welcomes air travelers. Earthquake and war damaged buildings testify to the continuing trauma that besets the land.

An incredibly intricate and bulky stone crosses i\rises from the shore of Lake Sevan, anchored to the earth in a monastery yard. 

Natives find time to laugh amidst the sometimes harsh living conditions in Armenia and Kurkjian and Karanian have caught them all with vivid clarity in their camera lens. 

A country is not only its land but also its people, and here are the people of Armenia. Here are its soldiers, its children, its weathered elders. 

In "Out of Stone" you will find the bedrocks that make up the land and the breathtakingly lovely vistas that seem to abound in this area. Ancient ruins, fields of hard stone, mysterious churches and chapels dot the countryside. Sheep forage for food, and a waterfall flows over a green-covered cliff.

Photography has been taught to lie by the computer, but in this book you'll see the unadulterated work of true photographers. 

Documenting the reality of this many-faceted region and brining to life a book of beauty is a true gift. "three thousand years ago, among rock strewn steppes, an ancient people chiseled a homeland. They created a society, and built a nation. These Armenians carved an enduring civilization--out of stone."

This is their story, told by talented photographers. If you love to travel, you mustn't miss "Out of Stone."