Entering the photography scene in the early 1960s, Alexander Alajyan appeared on the frontlines of Soviet-Armenian documentary photography in a very short time, publishing dozens of images every year throughout many of the local illustrated magazines, as well as journals such as Ogonyok and Sovetskoe Foto. Some of the more successful of these images were also reproduced in photographic albums printed by local and Russian publishing houses.

The photographer's creative trajectory is varied, even self-contradictory. Next to countless, functional photo-reportages commissioned by the local press, Alajyan worked on his independent narrative and experimental series from which separate images would occasionally appear in periodicals, gaining wide popularity. His diverse scope of interests included many genres and themes: from landscapes and portraits to nudes and photograms. It is noteworthy that Alajyan interpreted these subjects using a variety of stylistic and conceptual approaches that were freely drawn from the history of local, Russian and European modernist photography. In his rural and pastoral series, for example, Alajyan often stayed within the bounds of classical pictorialism, evoking the image of Armenia in lyrical and romantic, as well as slightly exotic tones.

These photos stood in sharp contrast to Alajyan's photo-essays on urban life.Relying on a dynamic combination of sharp angles, wide-angle distortions and strong contrasts, he pictured the city as an organism in a state of constant movement and transformation. At the same time, Alajalyan also applied techniques drawn from abstract and ‘subjective’ photography when his subject – as in his female nude studies - served merely as a trigger for exploring private psychological conditions and desires. In this particular genre, Alajyan can be regarded as a pioneer in the history of Soviet-Armenian photography. Searching for the boundaries between reality and imagination, he often crosses the border in his nudes, entering into a realm of metaphysics and surrealism. These different approaches are united by Alajyan’s paradigmatic view of the world and reality as a multifaceted and unstable phenomenon. Alajyan’s contribution to the development and popularization of artistic photography in Armenia is significant. He often organized solo exhibitions at the Journalists' House of Armenia and has repeatedly participated in overseas competitions in Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Argentina where he was awarded a number of prizes and diplomas. In the 1990s, Alajyan moved to the United States with his family. 

1) (unsigned), ‘Parz ev Anmijakan’ (‘Simple and Frank’, in Armenian), Sovetakan Hayastan, no.12, 1984

Vigen Galstyan, 2016