ARMENIAN SPIRIT CELEBRATED IN PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT AT BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE
ParamusPost.com
4415936
April 22 2009
First Week Opens with Historic Overview of Archives on April 28 at
2 p.m.
Bergen Community College will celebrate the Armenian people’s triumph
over tragedy with the New Jersey premiere of "The Armenians: Spirit
of Survival," a photography exhibit sponsored by the College’s Center
for the Study of Intercultural Understanding, the Bergen Community
College Peace, Justice and Reconciliation Center and the Bergen
Community College Foundation.
Gallery Bergen, the College’s 2,250-square-foot art exhibition space,
will house the display from Saturday, April 25, 2009 to Friday, May
22, 2009. The gallery is located on the third floor of the College’s
high-technology and arts building, West Hall, at 400 Paramus Road,
Paramus. The gallery’s hours of operation are Tuesdays, Thursdays and
Fridays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.;
and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free and open to
the public.
The exhibit, provided by Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives,
Inc., chronicles the struggle of the Armenian people in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries as their culture, religion, language and very
existence were threatened by the Ottoman, Russian and Persian empires,
and then later by the Soviet Union. The Armenian people were the
targets of the 20th-century’s first genocide, which led to the deaths
of as many as 1.5 million people in 1915. The Armenians persevered –
in spite of great loss – and found the spirit needed to thrive.
Ruth Thomasian, executive director of Project SAVE, will conduct
a presentation on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 2 p.m. in Gallery
Bergen on the origins of the Armenian photograph archives and on
the development of the exhibition. Project SAVE, founded in 1975,
is a Watertown, Mass.-based nonprofit whose mission is to collect,
document and preserve the historic and modern photographic record of
Armenians and their heritage. Thomasian maintains the world’s only
photographic archive chronicling the journey of the Armenian people.
The Gallery Bergen display will feature 40 large photographs and
include text documenting the Armenians’ internment, mass execution and
subsequent diaspora from Asia Minor. Project SAVE’s 25,000 photographs,
which date from 1860, feature families living during the Ottoman,
Russian and Persian empires, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia
and the Republic of Armenia.
Members of Project SAVE work closely with photo donors to obtain
the images, which have appeared at Ellis Island Museum in New York,
the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., and in many books and
television programs.
According to the U.S. Census for 2000, there are 1.5 million people
of Armenian descent in the U.S. Bergen County has 8,305 Armenian
Americans, most of whom reside in the southeastern part of the county.
Bergen Community College is a public two-year coeducational college,
enrolling more than 15,000 students in Associate in Arts, Associate
in Science, and Associate in Applied Science degree programs and
certificate programs. More than 10,000 students are enrolled in
non-credit, professional courses through the Division of Continuing
Education, the Institute for Learning in Retirement, the Philip
J. Ciarco Jr. Learning Center, located at 355 Main Street, Hackensack,
and Bergen at the Meadowlands, located at 1280 Wall Street West,
Lyndhurst. Information about the College is available at
or by phoning the Welcome Center at (201) 447-7200