Exhibit puts lens on L.A. Armenians
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Sept 12 2004

GLENDALE — Artist Ara Oshagan has spent four years photographing
Armenians throughout Los Angeles in a quest to answer the question,
What does it mean to be an Armenian?

“Where does the Armenian stop and the non-Armenian begin? What
are those boundaries?” said Oshagan, 39, whose day job is as a
computational physicist. “We’re using Armenians to try and address
universal issues of identity for all immigrant communities.”

“Traces of Identity: An Insider’s View into the L.A. Armenian
Community,” features 40 black-and-white photographs exploring identity
through religion, family, society and politics.

Oshagan’s photographs capture scenes in everyday life — a family
retreat at Big Bear Lake, inmates at Ironwood State Prison, church
services in Pasadena, demonstrations on east Hollywood streets, a
party in Studio City, a drug rehabilitation center in Palmdale and
a convalescent home in Eagle Rock.

“Ara moved beyond stereotypes of Armenians and really was able to get
inside the variety of different expressions of Armenian identity,”
said Donald Miller, a professor of religion and executive director of
the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern
California. The center sponsored the exhibit. The documentary exhibit
is partially funded by grants from the California Council for the
Humanities and the George Ignatius Foundation.

“On one level he shows Armenians living the good life with extended
family by a swimming pool, but at the other extreme there are
photographs of Armenians in jail. That’s a long ways from the
stereotype of the good life by the pool,” Miller said.

The identity of immigrant groups is constantly being challenged, and
the photographs show that there are multiple identities of Armenians,
he said.

“I hope what will happen is people will see the complexity of the
Armenian community, that there’s not one identity, not one social
class, and they’ll walk away from the exhibit with a sense of the
contribution that Armenians are making to this rich mosaic of Southern
California,” Miller said.

Exhibit curator Charlie Hachadourian said Oshagan has created a
literary narrative with his work.

“Everything is about the relationships Ara creates with the people he
photographs, and in that tension he shares with his subjects is the
ever evolving identity of Armenians in Los Angeles,” Hachadourian
said. “Ara is constantly asking how we delineate our identities
as Armenians and how we perpetually reinvent ourselves as a unique
component of a multifaceted and vast whole.”

Oshagan, who comes from a long line of Armenian writers, said the
answer to what being Armenian means is at the hands of each viewer.

His own conclusion is that identity constantly evolves.

“The lines between the subcommunity and the larger community are
getting blurred all the time,” said the Glendale resident. “For
each viewer there can either be an answer or there could be more
questions. It’s an interaction between the audience and the work. I’m
posing the question.”

Naush Boghossian, (818) 546-3306 naush.boghossian@dailynews.com

IF YOU GO The exhibit runs from Sept. 24 through Dec. 31 at the
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park, 4800
Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. To see Ara Oshagan’s photographs,
visit