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A Hero and a Homeland for Armenians in America: Photography and the Construction of Cultural Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2010

Mitra M. Abbaspour
Mitra M. Abbaspour*
Affiliation:
Department of Art History, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, N.Y.; email: mitramonir@yahoo.com
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Extract

Both portrait and landscape, historical scene and contemporary monument, and, ultimately, both engraving and photograph, this image contains the keys to a significant story from modern Armenian cultural history. In the years following World War I hundreds of Armenians immigrated to the United States, where through the creation of objects such as this picture, they reconstituted their community, emphasizing the longevity of their history, their unity as a minority culture, and their identity as a diaspora.

Information

Type
Quick Studies
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 13 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Published with the permission of Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives, Watertown, Mass., courtesy of Haighouhi Arzouian, Worcester, Mass. (archive reference Haighouhi ARZOUIAN 5-84). [A color version of this figure can be viewed online at journals.cambridge.org/mes]

Both portrait and landscape, historical scene and contemporary monument, and, ultimately, both engraving and photograph, this image contains the keys to a significant story from modern Armenian cultural history.Footnote 1 In the years following World War I hundreds of Armenians immigrated to the United States, where through the creation of objects such as this picture, they reconstituted their community, emphasizing the longevity of their history, their unity as a minority culture, and their identity as a diaspora.

In this image, an imaginative landscape sets the stage for the monument to General Andranik Toros Ozanian and the Armenian Legion and illustrates the history that led to the Battle of Arara.Footnote 2 General Andranik is revered in Armenian collective memory as a cultural hero for his role as a leader of the Armenian Legion, resistance forces that fought as part of Allied troops against the Ottoman army.Footnote 3 He gained fame for his strategy in battle, especially after Armenian volunteer units under his command took control of Van, an important center of Armenian cultural, social, and economic life, in the spring of 1915. Then, in 1918, his military leadership helped the Armenian population of Van escape the Ottoman army to Eastern Armenia. Here, the silhouette of Mount Ararat, a symbol of the Armenian homeland, dominates the background landscape and marks the land below it as historic Armenia as well as the area of General Andranik's military feats.Footnote 4 There, horse-drawn wagons lead a seemingly endless train of marching figures, possibly Armenian Legionnaires on their way to battle, possibly Armenian civilians exiled by the Ottoman army on their way into Eastern Armenia. Elsewhere, planes dot the sky and World War I style tanks roll over the hills, completing the narrative of General Andranik as both a military strategist and a guardian of the masses.

Here, General Andranik is resplendent in the military uniform and medals that represent his 1918 ascent to the position of Major General and the six times he was honored for gallantry in battle during his career as an Armenian general, political activist, and national hero.Footnote 5 He stands next to a massive monument inscribed with a dedication on the base that pays tribute to the “Courageous Armenians of the General Union of Armenian Legionnaires.” The date on the shaft of the obelisk indicates that this monument commemorates the triumph of the French Armenian Legion over the armies of the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Arara (Palestine) on 19 September 1918.Footnote 6 In recognition that this victory could not outweigh the lost lives of Armenian civilians, the actual monument, which is also a headstone for the communal grave of the Armenian soldiers who died in the battle, is known today as the Armenian Martyrs Monument of the Battle of Arara and is dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide.Footnote 7

Many of those who fought in the Battle of Arara, as well as the general himself, were survivors who had lost their families in the massacres of 1895–96 or in the genocide of 1915. These survivors fought alongside allied forces with the promise of an independent homeland and were disappointed when the Paris Peace Treaty left them minority subjects of larger empires. They became the foundation of the diaspora community in America; this picture was made for them. Their presence is announced in the ribbon decorating the wreath on the side of the monument's pedestal, which dedicates the entire scene to “Honor of the Homeland” and immediately suggests a distance from the place named and depicted. This inscription, along with the double signatures of the artist that twice cite this picture as the creation of the Worcester, Massachusetts, photo studio of K. S. Melikian, takes viewers on a journey far from the battlefields of the Armenian resistance in World War I and into the collective heart of the Armenian-American diaspora.

Crafted in 1928, the technically elaborate process of this photograph is notable as evidence of the skill that made Armenians leading photographers in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote 8 Unlike a traditional photograph, which depicts a specific historical moment, this image is both a composite picture and a composite narrative. As a picture, the image is made from piecing together photographs with engravings and printed text before rephotographing the whole composition and painting in detail. As a narrative, the scene is laden with symbols that when assembled commemorate the life journey of General Andranik. By using the technique of composite photography, Melikian depicts General Andranik's countenance and garments with the sharp precision permitted by photography, while strategic embellishments of the hand-tinting process have painted over the seams between the portrait of Andranik and the engraved landscape. Thus, his photographic portrait carries a sense of immediacy and reality that lends authenticity and vivacity to his representation. The landscape and monument, however, are carefully sketched to embed the general in a complex compilation of symbols targeted specifically to the Armenian-American diaspora: the symbol of a distant homeland, a struggle for national independence, and a memorial to the dead. These experiences and this historical narrative unified Armenians in the American diaspora; General Andranik was an outspoken representative of that narrative.

Under mounting political tension and with a belief that an agreement for an Armenian state would be reached at the Paris Peace Treaty, General Andranik, along with hundreds of other Armenians, fled into exile in the United States in 1919. General Andranik settled in Fresno, California, where he continued to use his stature as a military hero to campaign for the creation of an independent Armenian state.Footnote 9 When General Andranik died in California on 31 August 1927, services were held on both coasts; The New York Times obituary reports that 2,500 members of the Armenian community attended his services in New York.Footnote 10 Thus, this photograph, dated to 1928, is ultimately much more than either a historical scene or portrait; it is a striking posthumous memorial.

References

NOTES

1 Image (Arzouian 5-84) is from the holdings of Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives, Watertown, Mass., courtesy of Haigouhi Arzouian, Worcester, Mass.

2 General Andranik's name is transliterated alternately with a “d” or a “t” as the third letter. Project SAVE spells the name with “t” as General Antranik, but the “Andranik” seems to be the more common spelling and will thus be used here.

3 Antranig Chalabian, General Andranik and the Armenian Revolutionary Movement (Southfield, Mich.: Antranig Chalabian, 1988).

4 The Armenian myth of origin, the Haik and Bel story, takes place around Mount Ararat. Razmik Panossian notes, “In terms of popular perceptions this story is just as important in modern nationalist thinking as ‘objective’ history.” Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Comissars (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 51.

5 “General Antranik, Noted Fighter Dies; Commanded Armenian and Russian Forces Against Those of the Turks,” The New York Times, 2 September 1927, sec. Amusements, Hotels, and Restaurants, 17.

6 “ALMA Armenian Legionnaire Traveling Exhibit Begins Nationwide Tour,” The Armenian Reporter, 19 August 2009, http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-08-19-alma-armenian-legionnaire-traveling-exhibit-begins-nationwide-tour (accessed 23 September 2009). For information on the recruitment of Armenians for the Battle of Arara, see Christopher Walker, “World War I and the Armenian Genocide,” The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, vol. II, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997), 267.

7 In 1925 the Armenian Martyrs Monument of the Battle of Arara was moved from its original site on the battlefield in Arara, Palestine, to the Armenian Cemetery of St. Savior's Convent in Jerusalem, near the patriarchate, where ceremonies are held annually on 24 April to commemorate victims of the genocide. See Meron Benvenisti, “Extract from the Book Ir Ha-Menuhot,” Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Armenian Studies Program, Genocide Commemoration, 2004 (Jerusalem, Israel: Hebrew University, 28 April 2004); the original text in Hebrew is Ir ha-Menuhot: Bate ha-ʿAlmin shel Yerushalayim (Jerusalem: Keter, 1990). For a current location of the monument and a description of the memorial services see, “Jerusalem Armenians Mark 86th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide,” The Armenian National Committee of Jerusalem (25 April 2001), http://www.atour.com/~aahgn/news/20010425e.html (accessed 18 September 2009).

8 Dickenson Jenkins Miller, “The Craftsman's Art: Armenians and the Growth of Photography in the Near East 1856–1981” (Master's thesis: American University of Beirut, 1981), 45.

9 “Armenians to Ask Mandate: Mission Here to Plead for Safety from Turkish Offenders,” The New York Times, 23 November 1919 and “Armenian Mandate Assailed by Gerard: Role Proposed for America Would Benefit No One but the Turks, Says Ex-Ambassador,” The New York Times, 8 December 1919.

10 “Armenians Eulogize General Andranik; Speakers at Memorial Meeting Mourn Him as Greatest Hero of Native Land,” The New York Times, 10 October 1927, sec. Sports, 21.