“Project Save” publicizes fall images exhibition and programming

WATERTOWN, Mass. — Project Save Photographic Archive, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit devoted to preserving the worldwide Armenian expertise by means of images, introduced at this time its lineup of fall programming, together with its first main exhibition within the group’s gallery and archive house and two occasions in its common “Conversations on Photography” collection.

French-Armenian photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Astrig Agopian’s multimedia exhibition “Like There’s No Tomorrow” will open at Project Save on November 13, 2025, and run by means of January 17, 2026. The exhibit focuses on the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh, a area Armenians have inhabited for millennia and whose cultural heritage has endured centuries of upheaval. Agopian’s exhibition digs deeply into questions of cultural heritage, identification in diaspora and wartime displacement. The exhibit is in partnership with ART WORKS Projects, a Chicago- and Hague-based visible arts non-profit.

“Like There’s No Tomorrow” incorporates pictures and video that doc the lives of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh as an Azerbaijan-led struggle broke out in September 2020 and escalated in 2023 into mass displacement, broadly described by human rights organizations as ethnic cleaning. Agopian traveled to the realm and garnered interview footage and in depth photographic documentation of struggle and its results, following people and households as they navigated violence, loss and displacement. The undertaking combines highly effective images, oral histories and multimedia belongings right into a dwelling archive that additionally serves instructional and advocacy functions.

“Agopian invites us to consider how people live in and endure the unimaginable: war, hatred and revisionist history and what they cling to or carry when forced to flee,” stated Arto Vaun, Executive Director of Project Save. “Her work reflects Project Save’s mission to preserve and share the stories and cultural materials that define the global Armenian experience.”

To deepen the historic narrative, Vaun stated the exhibition will embrace pictures from Project Save’s personal collections, introduced alongside Agopian’s modern work. These archival pictures doc Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, amplifying the continuum of Armenian presence and resilience within the area.

“Like There’s No Tomorrow” is supported by means of ART WORKS Projects’ Emerging Lens Fellowship. Partially funded by means of the National Endowment for the Arts, Emerging Lens gives unrestricted stipends, skilled mentorship and editorial and manufacturing help to rising visible storytellers throughout the globe working to doc human rights points by means of lived experiences. More particulars on the Fellowship are here.

“Conversations On Photography” collection spotlights acclaimed native artists

Project Save’s mission-expansive work consists of conversations with outstanding voices in images and the visible arts whose work highlights the significance of documentation and archiving and using visible storytelling within the preservation of cultural heritage. Two “Conversations On Photography” occasions are deliberate this fall:

• Thursday, October  30, 7 p.m. – Conversation with Toni Pepe. As Chair of Photography and Associate Professor of Art at Boston University, Toni Pepe creates prints and three-dimensional assemblages from discarded newspaper pictures, household snapshots and out of date photographic gear. Using these components, Pepe investigates how images shapes understandings of time, house and self. In dialog with Arto Vaun, Pepe will current examples from her work Can I Hold You?, exploring the press pictures and newspaper clippings discovered within the Boston Public Library’s Women and Gender Issues Collection. These pictures have lengthy been hidden inside a bigger Library archive with the gathering’s origins remaining unknown. Pepe stated working within the archive as an artist “allows me to navigate it not just as a repository of history, but as an unstable, active space of meaning. By emphasizing the photograph as both image and artifact, I hope to prompt viewers to reconsider how we witness, record and remember.”
  

• Thursday, November 6,  7 p.m. – Conversation with Claire Beckett. The Boston-based photographer’s large-scale portraits supply views right into a post-9/11 America and the impression of the U.S. on international affairs. In dialog with Boston Public Library Lead Curator & Manager of the Arts, Kristin Parker, Beckett will present and focus on pictures from her physique of labor that provide a crucial lens on American identification and the impression of worldwide battle. Recent initiatives embrace Simulating Iraq, a surprising take a look at cultural appropriation inside American army coaching, together with maneuvers throughout which troops enact coaching practices upon different troops dressed within the conventional costume of Middle Eastern residents. The “cosplay” components of the maneuvers have a major impression on American troopers who’re themselves Middle Eastern, Muslim or who observe Islam. Of her work, Beckett stated, “Photography is my language for thinking and speaking. I lean into picture-making’s visual and psychological aspects to draw viewers in, encouraging them to think about the issues driving the work.”

“All three of these photographers are telling a larger story about how culture is perceived, collected, and preserved,” Vaun stated. “Their work reflects Project Save’s role as a living archive. Each one brings photographs and stories to life; they preserve and illuminate culture and history through their lenses.”

A Legacy of preservation

Founded in 1975 by Ruth Thomasian, Project Save started as a grassroots effort to doc the tales of aged Armenian immigrants by means of pictures. Over 5 many years, the group amassed greater than 100,000 authentic pictures from Armenian households and communities world wide, depicting every day life, world occasions, spiritual ceremonies and visits with political leaders, artists, writers and freedom fighters. Vaun grew to become Project Save’s  Executive Director in 2021 and led the acquisition of Project Save’s first public residence, full with places of work, climate-controlled storage and gallery house.